Recent research provides evidence that an intersectional approach to defining reference and focal groups results in a higher percentage of comparisons flagged for potential DIF. The study presented here examined the generalizability of this pattern across methods for examining DIF. While the level of DIF detection differed among the four methods…

McMillan Public Schools (MPS) is a public school system in the southeastern part of the United States that serves approximately 28,000 students. Gregory Middle School (GMS) is one of 52 schools within MPS that serves 985 students. I used MPS and GMS as pseudonyms to anonymize the school system and school. In July 2019, I was appointed as the…

The Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Young Scholars model offers new language and ideas for thinking about giftedness that embrace expanded beliefs about the nature of intelligence and highlight the importance of nurturing intelligent behavior in children from diverse cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds as early as possible. These…

This applied dissertation was designed to provide perceptual teacher data as well as summative testing data to educational leaders concerning the effects of implementing Investigations in Number, Data, and Space® (Investigations) in three Title I elementary school settings, two Title I schools, and one non-Title I school. Data collected during…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation spawned a plethora of standardized testing services for all the high stakes testing required by the law. We argue that one-size-fits all assessments disadvantage students who are English Language Learners, in the USA, as well as students with limited economic resources, special needs, and not reading on…

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between teacher quality, student characteristics, teacher attributes, and student growth in reading. The legislation requirements enacted with NCLB (2002), WAEA (2013), and Chapter 29 (Wyoming Department of Education, 2010) necessitated that student achievement be a primary consideration…

In the fall of 2005 the principal and teachers at Knickerbacker Middle School (KMS) were worried. KMS was a "School in Good Standing" but had not hit federal or state benchmarks because of low subgroup scores on the English Language Arts (ELA) test--especially scores received by economically disadvantaged students, about half of this…

The school accountability movement has led to a marked increase in the use of standardized test scores to measure school and teacher productivity, yet little is known about the correlation between test score gains and improvements in long-term outcomes. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I study the impact of a school choice policy in…