Community colleges have been engaged for the last sixty years in providing open access to public higher education to anyone with a high school diploma. Recently, disappointing success rates for developmental students have driven some colleges to reduce or restrict access to college based on standardized test scores. The operative phrase in most of…

This paper contends that powerful techniques to manipulate data, enabled by technological and economic developments, can be easily co-opted to serve the restrictive frameworks of hyper-controlling, managerial accountability that characterise current cultures of summative assessment in education. In response to these challenges, research is…

Coburn and Turner (this issue) present an intriguing framework for understanding how data has come to be used in the current high accountability environments in education. In this framework, they connect various processes of data use within organizational and political contexts. Data use is presented using an ecological perspective that deepens…

Merrifield (2009) provides a useful polemic about the sad state of data analysis too frequently encountered in the school choice literature. Available data come from limited policy experiments with only modest amounts of choice and competition. The effects of very modest changes in school choice on school performance are, as one might expect,…

Superintendents' performance evaluations continue to be too frequently conducted through a highly informal, subjective process, based more on impressions than data. Several states require school boards to use student performance data in evaluating their superintendents. Student achievement data, focusing on continuous improvement, should certainly…

The purpose of this paper is to enumerate a series of security steps that might be taken by those individuals or organizations that are contemplating Web-based tests and performance assessments. From a security viewpoint, much of what goes on with Web-based transactions is similar to other general computer activity, but the recommendations focus…

Includes two commentaries on the special section. Allen notes concerns about back translation of measurement instruments and highlights the need for more research on normative commitment. Vandenberghe addresses issues of factor structure, means comparison, and moderating effects. (Contains 10 references.) (SK)

Gerald M. Gillmore's criticisms of a study on the relative magnitudes of the "course effect" and "teacher effect" on students' ratings of teacher competence are examined. It is suggested that Gillmore's criticisms should not be permitted to detract from the conclusion that there is a significant course effect. (Author/MLW)

The critical issues, in a dispute between Romney's interpretation of his results and Gillmore's interpretation, are described as whether the teacher factor should be treated as fixed or random in the analysis of variance model and what conclusions can be drawn from the results of the study. (Author/MLW)

Reflects on a previous article in this issue that demonstrated the use of log-linear analysis in research investigating categorical variables associated with the study of career development and transition for individuals with disabilities. Initial exposure to and motivation for pursuing the study and use of multivariate categorical data analysis…

Classical test theory, item response theory, and generalizability theory all treat the abilities to be measured as continuous variables, and the items of a test as independent probes of underlying continua. These models are well-suited to measuring the broad, diffuse traits of traditional differential psychology, but not for measuring the outcomes…

In August 1996 Jay P. Greene, Paul E. Peterson, and Jiangtao Du, with Leesa Boeger and Curtis L. Frazier, issued a report called "The Effectiveness of School Choice in Milwaukee." The report, referred to as GPDBF, presented data that indicated that low-income minority students in their third and fourth years of participation in the…

Traditional methods for task analysis have been largely based on the Instructional Systems Development (ISD) model, which is widely used throughout industry and the military. The first part of this document gives an overview of cognitive task analysis, which is conducted within the first phase of ISD. The following steps of cognitive task analysis…

Utilizing "Social Indicators" (1979), discusses growth and distribution of schooling in the U.S., trends in student test performance, and major organizational changes in elementary/secondary education. Comments on quality of available data and suggests improvements for future reporting of educational indicators. (Reprint of article is available…

Research on the quality of foreign medical graduates (FMG) in terms of their competence or manifest abilities as measured by examinations, and their performance or actual behavior is briefly reviewed. In addition, some of the methodological problems that make research on foreign medical graduates difficult to interpret are critiqued, and…