Until recently, much of the research on students' understanding of statistical ideas has focused on their conceptions of center or on what constitutes a good sample. In the past decade research on students' statistical thinking has broadened and increasing interest has been paid to how students think about variability in data or variability in…

Conventional wisdom claims a newly discovered dropout crisis in high schools. Jay Greene, of the Manhattan Institute, and Christopher Swanson, formerly with the Urban Institute, are primarily responsible for this claim, publishing reports showing these extraordinary high dropout rates nationwide, for the states, and for many specific school…

The 2000 US presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush has been the most intriguing and controversial in American history. Using the Florida ballot data, Wu showed that the 2000 election result could have been reversed had the "butterfly ballot effect" been eliminated. Through a combinatorial approach, Harger concluded that…

Overall the past decade has not been kind to educational research. First, some "research" has been subordinated to and corrupted by ideology. Second, there has been substantial questioning of what educational research should be and a fear that the federal government is moving to a rigid orthodoxy in defining what counts as…

It has been proposed that the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status and its scoring criteria should be adjusted to utilize a half standard deviation cutoff. Evidence is provided to support the claim that less stringent criteria will lead to higher numbers classified while arriving at the same research results. This proposal is considered and,…

Data collection and analysis are frequently neglected by school leaders over the course of the decision-making process. All schools gather large amounts of information about students and teachers, but most data are used to satisfy administrative requirements rather than evaluate school improvement in a systematic fashion. Apprehension regarding…

This study aimed to describe, compare, and analyze the use of specific types of data utilized in decision-making by administrators of more and less effective community colleges. The study utilized a modified version of Kim Cameron's "Assessment of Organizational Effectiveness on Higher Education" to measure and rank community college…

This Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development report documents the growing demand for learning around the world. A quantitative description of the functioning of education systems allows for international comparisons and the identification of the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to providing quality education. Chapter 1,…