The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the effect of a curricular application of the integrative ethical education (IEE) model (Narvaez, 2006; Narvaez & Bock, 2014) and its effect on first-year college students' ethical development. Using a pretest posttest design, participants' moral judgment and reasoning were measured…

This article presents the pseudo-equivalent group approach and discusses how it can enhance the quality of linking in the presence of nonequivalent groups. The pseudo-equivalent group approach allows to achieve pseudo-equivalence using propensity score reweighting techniques. We use it to perform linking to establish scale concordance between two…

Recent studies report that students' attitudes toward statistics play an important role in their statistics achievement. The goal of this study was to test the psychometric properties of the "Survey of Attitudes Towards Statistics" (SATS-28) among undergraduate health science students enrolled in an introductory statistics course. Most…

This study examined whether a low-stakes write-to-learn (WTL) assignment improved exam performance. Students in one section of a child development course completed five assignments during a semester, whereby they identified 15 key concepts and related them to six themes (e.g., nature and nurture). Students in another section did not. Students who…

Recently, Nissen et al. argued in this journal for the use of Cohen's d, in place of the more commonly used normalized gain, in the analysis of preinstruction and postinstruction scores on concept inventories used to measure the effectiveness of instruction. Their reason for advocating such a change is that they say normalized gains are…

Generally, some courses in a degree program, but not all, have a hurdle, threshold or minimum pass requirement, which is often described as a condition that must be met by a student in order to pass a course. As assessment drives learning for most university learners, and first year experience is critical for retention and success, understanding…

While research on school suspensions and its impact on students is not new, scholars have not yet explored whether there is a link between school suspensions and high school students' preparation for success in STEM. Using nationally representative data, this study explored the relationship of suspensions to math outcomes while considering…

Disengaged test taking tends to be most prevalent with low-stakes tests. This has led to questions about the validity of aggregated scores from large-scale international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, as previous research has found a meaningful correlation between the mean engagement and mean performance of countries. The current study, using…

Effects of reward pedagogy (competitive, cooperative, individualistic, cooperative-competitive, and cooperative-individualistic) on spelling scores and prosocial behavior in Singapore students were examined alongside its interplay with ability level. A total of 1005 Primary 3 and 4 students were randomly assigned to one of the five reward…

The argument-based approach to validity (Kane, 2013) focuses on two steps: (1) making claims about the proposed interpretation and use of test scores as a coherent, interpretive argument; and (2) evaluating those claims based on theoretical and empirical evidence related to test performances and scores. This paper discusses the role of…

This paper investigates the impact of extending free school lunch to all students, regardless of income, on academic performance in New York City middle schools. Using a difference-in-differences design and unique longitudinal, student-level data, we derive credibly causal estimates of the impacts of "Universal Free Meals" (UFM) on test…

This study presents an original genre awareness intervention for kindergarten children. The efficacy of the intervention was tested on children's awareness in three different genres: narrative, epistolary, and instructions. We hypothesized that the intervention would be effective in improving children's structural knowledge in all three genres.…

This one-page document illustrates highlights of Austin Independent School District's (AISD's) CARES program activities and achievements. CARES, now in its second year of implementation, was able to maintain high quality of service standards, while experiencing a dramatic increase in volume. Further, CARES team members served vital functions…

State testing programs regularly release previously administered test items to the public. We provide an open-source recipe for state, district, and school assessment coordinators to combine these items flexibly to produce scores linked to established state score scales. These would enable estimation of student score distributions and achievement…

This chapter describes three members of a college of education, all working in different roles to prepare teachers. In response to various external and internal pressures to improve and demonstrate program quality (such as accreditation and a Gates-funded reform agenda), the three chose to collaborate on the idea of a "culture of…