Cost-effectiveness analysis is rarely used in education. When it is used, it often fails to meet methodological standards, especially with regard to cost measurement. Although there are occasional criticisms of these failings, we believe that it is useful to provide a listing of the more common concerns and how they might be addressed. Based upon…

Black and Hispanic students are undeniably underidentified as gifted and underrepresented in gifted education. The underrepresentation of the two largest groups of "minority" students is long-standing, dating several decades, and is a serious area of contention. Most debates focus on the efficacy of traditional intelligence tests with…

This report describes the implementation of professional development (PD) reforms and efforts to use teacher effectiveness (TE) data to inform PD through the third year of the initiative for all seven sites: Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS), Shelby County Schools (SCS, formerly Memphis City Schools), Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), and…

In their article Ruscio et al. (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) present a comparative study of some of the different variants of the "h" index. The study evaluates a total of 22 metrics, including the "h" index and "h"-type indices, as well as other conventional measures. The novelty of their work is to a large extent…

Cognitive ability tests are widely used in organizations around the world because they have high predictive validity in selection contexts. Although these tests typically measure several subdomains, testing is usually carried out for a single subdomain at a time. This can be ineffective when the subdomains assessed are highly correlated. This…

The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University conducted a large-scale analysis of the impact of charter schools on student performance. The center's data covered 65-70% of the nation's charter schools. Although results varied by state, 17% of the charter school students have significantly higher math results than …

This descriptive research study examined the validity of an adaptation of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) that uses a videotape with questions in American Sign Language with a special group of hearing-impaired college students, assuming that LASSI is still reliable for this group. The study was limited to prelingually deaf…

"How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement" estimates the effects on student achievement of attending a New York City charter school rather than a traditional public school and investigates the characteristics of charter schools associated with the most positive effects on achievement. Because the report relies on an…

This study examines the appropriateness of a large-scale state standards-based English-Language Arts (ELA) assessment for students who are deaf or hard of hearing by comparing the internal test structures for these students to students without disabilities. The Grade 4 and 8 ELA assessments were analyzed via a series of parcel-level exploratory…

Reviews current educational software evaluation methods, highlights problems, and describes the York Educational Software Evaluation Scales (YESES), an alternative criterion based model. Panel evaluation used by YESES is explained and YESES results are compared with evaluations from the Educational Products Information Exchange (EPIE) to indicate…

The study under review is the second-year evaluation report of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), a publicly funded voucher program that allows low-income students in Milwaukee to attend secular and religious private schools in that city. Its primary finding is that there were no overall statistically significant differences in…

Focuses on Subject-Pair Analysis, a technique for comparing examinations in different subjects, to demonstrate that reliance on statistical comparisons of standards between subjects is misplaced. Explicates the fundamental assumptions underlying the Subject-Pair Analysis. Argues that this and related analyses are inappropriate for dealing with the…

Since the use of bibliometric instruments has grown and will continue to grow in the future, the quality, availability, and accessibility of data on publications and citations is of tantamount importance. But equally important is a correct use of the data. This means that an important task of the bibliometric field is to highlight not only what…

This paper examines possible explanations for the fact that evaluation results are rarely used. Most explanatory factors for use of results in decision making mentioned in the literature have been clustered in three categories of variables. They concern: (1) the making of decisions about the practical problem; (2) the way in which evaluation is…

Focusing on educational measurement that suggests an action and has an outcome, 16 problem areas are defined and grouped into the following classes: (1) validity; (2) issues of statistical adjustment; (3) data insufficiencies; (4) other issues related to standardized testing and constructed responses; and (5) technical issues of psychometrics.…