The Pennsylvania Department of Education's (PDE's) Office for Safe Schools partnered with REL Mid-Atlantic to conduct a study using data from PDE's school climate survey. This survey, which is available on a voluntary basis to any school in the state, provides a way to track school climate and identify schools that need additional support to…

These are the appendixes for the full report, "Changes in School Climate during COVID-19 in a Sample of Pennsylvania Schools." The REL study analyzed changes in scores from a pre-pandemic year (2018/19) to the 2020/21 and 2021/22 school years, both of which were affected by COVID-19 and related policy changes. These technical appendixes…

The ability to predict accurately college freshman-year grade point average (FYGPA) in a way that minimizes the adverse impact associated with the predictors traditionally used as acceptance criteria has been an important and controversial topic for several decades. FYGPA is an important measure of educational performance because it is related to…

In February of 2013, the College Board announced it would undertake a redesign of the SAT® in order to develop an assessment that better reflects the work that students will do in college, focusing on the core knowledge and skills that evidence has shown to be critical in preparation for college and career. The redesigned test will be introduced…

We apply "value-added" models to estimate the effects of teachers on an outcome they cannot plausibly affect: student height. When fitting the relatively simple models that are widely used in educational practice to New York City data, we find the standard deviation of teacher effects on height is nearly as large as that for math and…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to provide an initial validation of a revision of the Transracial Adoption Parenting Scale-Revised (TAPS-R) with international transracial adoptive parents. Method: This study employed a cross-sectional, online survey design to recruit transracial adoptive parents from a parent support group, "Families…

Purpose: The present study had two goals: (a) to examine the revised structures of these measures to determine the reliability and validity when used in a sample of individuals with latedeafness, and (b) to examine differences in coping style in individuals with late-deafness across race, ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic status (SES), level…

Recent research has shown that admissions tests retain the vast majority of their predictive power after controlling for socioeconomic status (SES), and that SES provides only a slight increment over SAT and high school grades (high school grade point average [HSGPA]) in predicting academic performance. To address the possibility that these…

Estimates of teacher "value-added" suggest teachers vary substantially in their ability to promote student learning. Prompted by this finding, many states and school districts have adopted value-added measures as indicators of teacher job performance. In this paper, we conduct a new test of the validity of value-added models. Using…

Florida requires that students who do not meet grade-level reading proficiency standards on the end-of-year state assessment (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, FCAT) receive intensive reading intervention. With the stakes so high, teachers and principals are interested in using screening or diagnostic assessments to identify students with a…

Mental disorders appear to be on the rise among college students and are having a significant effect on their attrition, with anxiety identified as one of the most common presenting issues. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the relationships between separation individuation and the early maladaptive schema of approval seeking with…

The continued accumulation of validity evidence for the intended uses of educational assessment scores is critical to ensure that inferences made using the scores are sound. To that end, the College Board has continued to collect college outcome data to evaluate the relationship between SAT® scores and college success. This report provides updated…

The Study evaluated the predictive validity of various operationalizations of AP® Exam and course information that could be used to make college admission decisions. The incremental validity of different AP variables, above and beyond traditional admission measures such as SAT® and high school grade point average (HSGPA), in predicting first-year…

The purpose of this manuscript is to discuss the utility of the Community College Survey of Men (CCSM[c]), an instrument designed to examine predictors of student success for men in community colleges. The authors highlight initial validation results from a recent pilot of the CCSM[c], with a focus on the non-cognitive outcomes construct employed…

The authors examined science achievement growth at Grades 3, 5, and 8 and parent school involvement at the same time points using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. Data were analyzed using cross-classified multilevel latent growth curve modeling with time invariant and varying covariates. School-based…