School value-added models are widely applied to study, monitor, and hold schools to account for school differences in student learning. The traditional model is a mixed-effects linear regression of student current achievement on student prior achievement, background characteristics, and a school random intercept effect. The latter is referred to…

In the research reported here, we propose a new method for scale alignment and test scoring in the context of supporting students with disabilities. In educational assessment, students from these special populations take modified tests because of a demonstrated disability that requires more assistance than standard testing accommodation. Updated…

This article presents a latent class model for multilevel data to identify latent subgroups and estimate heterogeneous treatment effects. Unlike sequential approaches that partition data first and then estimate average treatment effects (ATEs) within classes, we employ a Bayesian procedure to jointly estimate mixing probability, selection, and…

Understanding whether or not different types of students master various attributes can aid future learning remediation. In this study, two-level diagnostic classification models (DCMs) were developed to represent the probabilistic relationship between external latent classes and attribute mastery patterns. Furthermore, variational Bayesian (VB)…

The literature on teachers' unions is relatively silent about the role of union strength in affecting important outcomes, due in large part to the difficulty in measuring union strength. In this article, we illustrate a method for obtaining valid, reliable, and replicable measures of union strength through the use of a Partial Independence Item…

Uses data from the Trial State Assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress to describe and illustrate a two-stage statistical model for investigating state-to-state variation in mathematics achievement. Results reveal considerable state-to-state heterogeneity in mathematics proficiency, but most heterogeneity is explainable on…