This study examines the effect varying models have on student understanding of fractions. The study addressed the question of what students know and understand about fractional concepts through the use of discrete and continuous models. A sample of 54 students in kindergarten and 3rd grade were given an interview pretest, participated in…

A comparison is made between Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I normal curve equivalent (NCE) gains derived from the norm-referenced test (NRT) Model A1 and Title I NCE gains derived from the criterion-referenced test (CRT) Model A2. In addition, four equating methods (normalized, curvilinear, linear, and abbreviated equipercentile) for…

Six methods for estimating the standard error of measurement (SEM) at specific score levels are compared by comparing score level SEM estimates from a single test administration to estimates from two test administrations, using Iowa Tests of Basic Skills data for 2,138 examinees. L. S. Feldt's method is preferred. (SLD)

The first step of the data analysis with respect to the eventual application of the various new methods in latent trait theory is here initiated. The data are a set of approximately 500 item responses of each of 7,439 examinees to the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Form 6, on one of three difficulty levels, which correspond to the ages of 11, 12 and…

For many reasons, students do not always perform on tests in ways that are congruent with their true abilities or achievement levels. Problems of this sort may be especially common on Title I evaluations where the tests administered are too difficult for a large percentage of the students. Such considerations raise the questions of whether…

Simple sum procedure of the conditional PDF approach (plausiblity of distractor function) combined with the normal approach method was applied for estimating the plausibility functions of the distractors of the Level II vocabulary subtest items of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. In so doing, the normal ogive model was adopted for the correct…

Considerable research has been conducted on the effect of anxiety on academic achievement. The most consistent finding is that high anxiety is associated with low performance, particularly at the elementary school level. To explain this situation, some researchers have hypothesized that anxiety debilitates students' attention span or time-on-task…

To assess the productivity of 167 Houston elementary schools, researchers applied a fractional linear programming procedure called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to each school's inputs and outputs. School output was measured by third- and sixth-graders' scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). Input resources comprised pupil…

This paper is the second report on the purpose, methodology, and results of a large-scale statistical analysis of standardized test scores from Chicago public elementary schools for 1988 and 1989. Major purposes were to develop methods for measuring student improvement (change) at the individual and school levels, to find ways of identifying…