This study explored children's area estimation performance. Two groups of fourth grade children completed area estimation tasks with rectangles ranging from 5 to 200 square units. A randomly assigned treatment group completed instructional sessions that involved a conceptual area measurement strategy along with numerical feedback. Children tended…

Given the importance of large-scale assessments to educational policy conversations, it is critical that subpopulation achievement is estimated reliably and with sufficient precision. Despite this importance, biased subpopulation estimates have been found to occur when variables in the conditioning model side of a latent regression model contain…

Regression, weighting and related approaches to estimating a population mean from a sample with nonrandom missing data often rely on the assumption that conditional on covariates, observed samples can be treated as random. Standard methods using this assumption generally will fail to yield consistent estimators when covariates are measured with…

A common strategy for estimating treatment effects in observational studies using individual student-level data is analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) or hierarchical variants of it, in which outcomes (often standardized test scores) are regressed on pretreatment test scores, other student characteristics, and treatment group indicators. Measurement…

The impact of uncertainty about item parameters on test information functions is investigated. The information function of a test is one of the most important tools in item response theory (IRT). Inaccuracy in the estimation of test information can have substantial consequences on data analyses based on IRT. In this article, the major part (called…

Newer statistical procedures are typically introduced to help address the limitations of those already in practice or to deal with emerging research needs. Quantile regression (QR) is introduced in this paper as a relatively new methodology, which is intended to overcome some of the limitations of least squares mean regression (LMR). QR is more…

A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to investigate the robustness of 4 latent variable interaction modeling approaches (Constrained Product Indicator [CPI], Generalized Appended Product Indicator [GAPI], Unconstrained Product Indicator [UPI], and Latent Moderated Structural Equations [LMS]) under high degrees of nonnormality of the observed…

This report describes the derivation and evaluation of a method for comparing the performance standards for public school students set by different states. It is based on an approach proposed by McLaughlin and associates, which constituted an innovative attempt to resolve the confusion and concern that occurs when very different proportions of…

In this paper, a data perturbation method for minimizing the possibility of disclosure of participants' identities on a survey is described in the context of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The method distinguishes itself from most approaches because of the presence of cognitive tasks. Hence, a data edit should have minimal…