Student growth percentiles (SGPs) are currently used by several states and school districts to provide information about individual students as well as to evaluate teachers, schools, and school districts. For SGPs to be defensible for these purposes, they should be reliable. In this study, we examine the amount of systematic and random error in…

Purpose: This study investigated the reading profiles of middle school Spanish-speaking emergent bilinguals (EBs) with significantly below grade level reading comprehension and whether these profiles varied in their reading comprehension performance over time. Method: Latent profile analyses were used to classify Grade 6 and 7 Hispanic EBs (n =…

Our purpose was to examine different approaches to modeling the time-varying nature of exceptionality classification. Using longitudinal data from one state's mathematics achievement test for 28,829 students in Grades 3 to 8, we describe the reclassification rate within special education and between general and special education, and compare four…

Student assessment nonparticipation (or opt out) has increased substantially in K-12 schools in states across the country. This increase in opt out has the potential to impact achievement and growth (or value-added) measures used for educator and institutional accountability. In this simulation study, we investigated the extent to which…

This longitudinal study of 78 Canadian English-speaking students examined the applicability of the stability, cumulative, and compensatory models in reading comprehension development. Archival government-mandated assessments of reading comprehension at Grades 3, 6, and 10, and the Canadian Test of Basic Skills measure of reading comprehension…

The purposes of the study are to describe characteristics of the voice change in sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade choir students using Cooksey's voice-change classification system and to determine if the singing self-efficacy of adolescent males is affected by the voice change, grade level, and experience. Participants (N = 80) consisted of…

Upper primary school children often routinely apply proportional methods to missing-value problems, even when it is inappropriate. We tested whether this tendency could be weakened if children were not required to produce computational answers to such problems. A total of 75 sixth graders were asked to classify 9 word problems of three types (3…

Over the past decade, educational policy trends have shifted to a focus on examining students' growth from kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12). One way states can track students' growth is with a vertical scale. Presently, every state that uses a vertical scale bases the scale on a unidimensional IRT model. These models make a…

The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for analyzing and evaluating student-constructed models of physical phenomena and monitoring the progress of these models. Moreover, we aimed to examine whether this framework could capture differences between models created using different computer-based modeling tools; namely, computer-based…

One important goal of Swedish educational policies is to integrate all pupils within regular education, irrespective of disability or difficulties in school, and to adjust education to individual needs. The aim of this paper was to explore how schools "socially construct", i.e. identify and support, pupils with special educational needs.…

Generalization is the key to effective autism intervention--when children can apply new skills across settings, they'll make broad, long-term improvements in behavior and social communication. The first how-to guide to generalization is finally here! Practical and reader-friendly, this is the book that helps professionals take today's most popular…

The 7th International Conference on Education Data Mining held on July 4th-7th, 2014, at the Institute of Education, London, UK is the leading international forum for high-quality research that mines large data sets in order to answer educational research questions that shed light on the learning process. These data sets may come from the traces…

Species identification tasks are a prerequisite for an understanding of biodiversity. Here, we focused on different educational materials to foster the identification of six European reptile species. Our educational training unit was based on natural plastic models of six species and pupils either used an illustrated identification book or a…