One of the greatest challenges for schools is to identify effective and ineffective teachers in a classroom. Teacher evaluation is an expensive process in both time and resources. It is important that evaluations provide data to improve teaching and learning. Therefore, each evaluation needs to communicate opportunities for growth. This…

Broadly defined, academic language (AL) is a set of lexical-grammatical norms and registers commonly used in educational and academic discourse. Mastery of academic language in writing is an important aspect of writing instruction and assessment. The purpose of this study was to use Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to examine the extent to…

Purpose: Multiple-measure principal evaluation systems have become commonplace in the past decade, but we do not know how principals perceive their evaluations under these regimes. This study analyzes how principals perceive evaluation in a state that was an early adopter of such a system. It describes how attitudes are explained by individual and…

Purpose: Multiple-measure principal evaluation systems have become commonplace in the last decade, but we do not know how principals perceive their evaluations under these regimes. This study analyzes how principals perceive evaluation in a state that was an early adopter of such a system. It describes how attitudes are explained by individual and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the male-female ratio of band directors serving on adjudication panels for Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) concert and sight reading evaluations from 2010-2019. The Texas Music Forms database was used to access a list of UIL band concert and sight reading adjudicators from across the state…

Researchers frequently evaluate rater judgments in performance assessments for evidence of differential rater functioning (DRF), which occurs when rater severity is systematically related to construct-irrelevant student characteristics after controlling for student achievement levels. However, researchers have observed that methods for detecting…

Teachers who can adapt and be ready for all changes will also be able to provide a balance to increase the competence of vocational high school students. This is also not denied when teachers become assessors in student competency tests. The objectives of this study were to produce an instrument for the readiness of teachers as assessors; to…

The purpose of this report is to present our process and results for establishing validity and reliability of an observation tool used to investigate teaching practices that high school mathematics teachers use to engage students. We developed our tool using established practices, such as reviewing literature to develop a framework for instruction…

This is the sixth and culminating study in a series whose purpose has been to acquire a conceptual understanding of school band performance and to develop an assessment based on this understanding. With the present study, we cross-validated and applied a rating scale for school band performance. In the cross-validation phase, college students…

Professional competence of pre-service English teachers needs to be done to find effective ways in improving their teaching performance, which requires the proper implementation of ICT during online learning. This study aims at investigating the level of professional competence of pre-service English teachers in vocational high school in applying…

This article explores issues that had to be confronted over a three-year period in terms of two New York State funded grants for which I was the evaluator. Major, critical challenges are presented, described, and discussed. Specifically, the paper addresses issues related to lack of planning at the grant design stage that resulted in challenges…

This cross-case synthesis gives voice to evaluators in EC-12 and higher education settings who are enacting a state-mandated system of teacher evaluation and support by examining their perceptions of the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS). Questions addressed included: How do differently situated school administrators and…

This dissertation explored whether unnecessary linguistic complexity (LC) in mathematics and biology assessment items changes the direction and significance of differential item functioning (DIF) between subgroups emergent bilinguals (EBs) and English proficient students (EPs). Due to inconsistencies in measuring LC in items, Study One adapted a…

Teacher perceptions after 5 years of implementing evaluation protocols that were initiated under Race to the Top revealed attitudes about the evaluation instrument used and the nature of their relationship with the evaluator. This study surveyed middle and high school teachers in nine Eastern Tennessee school districts. Data indicated unintended…

This article explores the use of "representativeness" as a guide to examining at English A-level through an analysis of two training days on two different modules. "Representativeness" is a cognitive heuristic which guides decision-making essentially by asking 'how much does this example look as if it belongs to this class of…