Scope and Method of Study: The study investigated the relationship between performance on the Oklahoma State Testing Program (OSTP) for grades 3-7 and the EXPLORE in math and reading for 586 students. The EXPLORE test, a part of the ACT, is given in the eighth grade and provides college readiness benchmarks and a national percentile ranking (NPR)…

Public schools stress the need for students to become informed and engaged citizens, however social studies instruction is becoming marginalized in many elementary schools today, the very area where they learn citizenship and about the world around them. This study seeks to: understand the reason for the loss of instructional time for social…

This study examines the problem of inconsistent achievement in social studies on the Delaware State Testing Program (DSTP) at a high school in Delaware. Since 2002, the district began an initiative to create common assessments for all core content areas that were meant to align with the state standards. In social studies, that initiative was the…

The purpose of this study was to explore how high school social studies teachers made sense of curriculum work. The setting was a large, urban area in Texas with high percentages of students who were considered economically disadvantaged. The context of the study was important because these teachers were implementing revised standards and new…

This mixed-methods case study focuses on the third through fifth grade classrooms at a public elementary school in a Midwestern urban school district where the Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment is being implemented. According to the school district, the goals of these tests are: to show…

This study uses a new psychometric model (mixture item response theory-MIMIC model) that simultaneously estimates differential item functioning (DIF) across manifest groups and latent classes. Current DIF detection methods investigate DIF from only one side, either across manifest groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, etc.), or across latent classes…

This dissertation examined perceptions of superintendents, principals and teachers about South Carolina's Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test or the Palmetto Assessment of State Standards testing program. A systemic sample of 729 superintendents, principals, and teachers were selected to participate in the study. A survey was emailed to the…

Federal legislation such as "No Child Left Behind" mandated that students with disabilities be included in accountability standards, creating an important responsibility to fairly assess all students, even those with disabilities. Consequently, a sense of urgency was placed on the entire educational system to ensure that these students…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) focuses on accountability for student achievement by mandating higher educational standards that are monitored through required annual student testing. The Complementary Assistance Learning Program (CALP), a before and after school tutoring and mentoring service, offers a potential means of accelerating the…

This study was designed to compare the effectiveness of using traditional and integrated instructional strategies to increase student understanding of the core concepts of energy. There are mixed messages in the literature as to the success of using an integrated approach to teach science content, despite suggestions its use improves student…

Multiple uses of the same assessment may present challenges for both the design and use of an assessment. Little advice, however, has been given to assessment developers as to how to understand the phenomena of multiple assessment use and meet the challenges these present. Particularly problematic is the case in which an assessment is used for…

This dissertation argues that changing ideas about race and engagement with race science were at the heart of a major transformation of political science in the 1920s, a transformation that I characterize as "becoming modern." This transformation was at once conceptual--visible in the basic categories and theoretical apparatus of the…

Recently, federal legislation has been implemented requiring that public school students meet a specified performance level of academic proficiency by the 2013/2014 school year. This reform movement, known as "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), was passed by Congress and incorporates many of President Bush's educational reform proposals…

This research project served two main purposes. The first was to uncover the perceptions of district administrators from Quality award-winning school districts in regard to the use of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program as a management framework. This was accomplished by using the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium's…