This paper compares two functionally different approaches to analyzing standardized test data: least-squares based value-added analysis, geared principally to supporting teacher and school accountability; and Betebenner’s (2009) student growth percentiles, which focuses primarily on tracking...

Convex Nonparametric Least Squares (CNLS) is a nonparametric regression method that does not require a priori specification of the functional form. The CNLS problem is solved by mathematical programming techniques; however, since the CNLS problem size grows quadratically as a function of the...

In this article, we study the performance of the estimator that minimizes $L_{2k}- $ order loss function (for $ k \ge \; 2 )$ against the estimators which minimizes the $L_2-$ order loss function (or the least squares estimator). Commonly occurring examples illustrate the differences in...