VIEWING ADMINISTRATION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS, A THREE-YEAR STUDY WAS MADE OF THE ROLE OF THE SCHOOL BOARD AS AN AGENCY FOR RESOLVING CONFLICT BETWEEN THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY. ROLE EXPECTATIONS FOR THE SCHOOL BOARD WERE ASSESSED BY INTERVIEWING 1,794 CITIZENS, 240 TEACHERS, 183 PUBLIC OFFICIALS, AND 90 SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS IN 12 WISCONSIN SCHOOL…

A study determined the effect of school organization on pupil attitudes, achievement, conceptual maturity, and classroom behavior. Ten teachers in each of three groups in a midwestern school district were selected and 707 pupils enrolled in their classes comprised the sample. An experimental group was placed in a nongraded form of organization,…

This is a report of pupil performance in Philadelphia schools based upon the February 1975 Philadelphia City-Wide Testing Program involving all pupils in kindergarten through grade 12. School performance distributions show the combined percentages of pupils in each school scoring within various national percentile rank ranges. The performance…

The principal objectives of this conference were to exchange information, discuss theoretical and empirical developments, and to coordinate research efforts. The papers and their authors are: "The Graded Response Model of Latent Trait Theory and Tailored Testing" by Fumiko Samejima; (Incomplete Orders and Computerized Testing" by…

Thirty-four papers on educational statistics which were presented at the 1971 AERA Conference are summarized. Six major interest areas are covered: (a) general information; (b) non-parametric methods; (c) errors of measurement and correlation techniques; (d) regression theory; (e) univariate and multivariate analysis; (f) factor analysis. (MS)

Project 5 of the GUME study on foreign language teaching methods continues the work of the previous projects concerning the relative effectiveness of a habit-formation (implicit) method and a cognitive-code learning method, with explanations in either the source or target language. The educational problem of Project 5 is teaching the English…

This paper introduces a model of adaptive learning relevant to adult learners of English for academic purposes (EAP) in Australia. Adaptive learning refers to latent variables hypothesized to contribute to optimal performance in the language. The model comprises motivation, self-efficacy, language learning anxiety, language learning strategies,…

Early adolescents may lack the cognitive and metacognitive skills necessary for effective inquiry learning. In particular, they are likely to have a nonnormative mental model of multivariable causality in which effects of individual variables are neither additive nor consistent. Described here is a software-based intervention designed to…

This paper extends a series of studies examining school district report cards, which began with investigations of Tennessee's report card data. Since 1988, the Texas State Board of Education has produced a report card on each school district to report district-level data. Texas district report card items were organized into student outcome…

This study's purpose was to explore the premise that increasing state support for elementary/secondary schools increases equal student access to educational opportunity. Following a brief overview of the background of the problem, including a description of the so-called "Minnesota Miracle" or Omnibus Tax Law of 1971 with its provisions…

The authors report the findings of a study conducted on a dually listed undergraduate/graduate distance learning course for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). They collected data on students' interactions with the course content and course technologies to investigate differences in how graduate and undergraduate students…

The family of Weibull distributions was investigated as a model for the distributions of response times for items in computer-based criterion-referenced tests. The fit of these distributions were, with a few exceptions, good to excellent according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. For a few relatively simple items, the two-parameter gamma…

This primer is an introduction to item response theory (also called item characteristic curve theory, or latent trait theory) as it is used most commonly--for scoring multiple choice achievement or aptitude tests. Written for the testing practitioner with minimum training in statistics and psychometrics, it presents and illustrates the basic…

A RESEARCH STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH-POTENTIAL CULTURALLY DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THESE CHARACTERISTICS FOR AN EFFECTIVE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM. INTELLIGENCE TESTS WERE ADMINISTERED TO CHILDREN FROM SIX ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS WITHIN A DISADVANTAGED SCHOOL DISTRICT, AND THE 203…

Forming a sequence covering the various aspects of the simplex model, four articles are presented here under the following titles: "A Simplex Model for Analyzing Academic Growth", "Analyzing Ratings With Correlated Intrajudge Measurement Errors", "The Correlation of States With Gain", and "The Reliability of…