Jenny Lenkeit works at Potsdam University, Germany, and conducts research concerned with Educational Effectiveness, International Large-Scale Assessments, and Inclusive Education.Knut Schwippert is Full Professor for Educational Empirical Research at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He works in the context of large-scale school comparison studies, in which he deals especially with issues concerning the relationship between migration background, social status, and educational success.

• Introduction – Doing research with international assessment studies: methodological and conceptual challenges and ways forward 1. Addressing omitted prior achievement bias in international assessments: an applied example using PIRLS-NPD matched data 2. Distributional properties of the PIRLS-home resource for learning scale and observed effects on reading achievement: are measurements of educational inequalities by latent indices without bias? 3. Configurations of multiple disparities in reading performance: longitudinal observations across France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom 4. Understanding language in education and grade 4 reading performance using a ‘natural experiment’ of Botswana and South Africa 5. Can test construction account for varying gender differences in international reading achievement tests of children, adolescents and young adults? – A study based on Nordic results in PIRLS, PISA and PIAAC 6. Improving international assessment through evaluation

Jenny Lenkeit works at Potsdam University, Germany, and conducts research concerned with Educational Effectiveness, International Large-Scale Assessments, and Inclusive Education.Knut Schwippert is Full Professor for Educational Empirical Research at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He works in the context of large-scale school comparison studies, in which he deals especially with issues concerning the relationship between migration background, social status, and educational success.

• Introduction – Doing research with international assessment studies: methodological and conceptual challenges and ways forward 1. Addressing omitted prior achievement bias in international assessments: an applied example using PIRLS-NPD matched data 2. Distributional properties of the PIRLS-home resource for learning scale and observed effects on reading achievement: are measurements of educational inequalities by latent indices without bias? 3. Configurations of multiple disparities in reading performance: longitudinal observations across France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom 4. Understanding language in education and grade 4 reading performance using a ‘natural experiment’ of Botswana and South Africa 5. Can test construction account for varying gender differences in international reading achievement tests of children, adolescents and young adults? – A study based on Nordic results in PIRLS, PISA and PIAAC 6. Improving international assessment through evaluation

Jenny Lenkeit works at Potsdam University, Germany, and conducts research concerned with Educational Effectiveness, International Large-Scale Assessments, and Inclusive Education.Knut Schwippert is Full Professor for Educational Empirical Research at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He works in the context of large-scale school comparison studies, in which he deals especially with issues concerning the relationship between migration background, social status, and educational success.

• Introduction – Doing research with international assessment studies: methodological and conceptual challenges and ways forward 1. Addressing omitted prior achievement bias in international assessments: an applied example using PIRLS-NPD matched data 2. Distributional properties of the PIRLS-home resource for learning scale and observed effects on reading achievement: are measurements of educational inequalities by latent indices without bias? 3. Configurations of multiple disparities in reading performance: longitudinal observations across France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom 4. Understanding language in education and grade 4 reading performance using a ‘natural experiment’ of Botswana and South Africa 5. Can test construction account for varying gender differences in international reading achievement tests of children, adolescents and young adults? – A study based on Nordic results in PIRLS, PISA and PIAAC 6. Improving international assessment through evaluation