This chapter provides an overview of statistical issues arising in work on educational assessment and school accountability, organized around some of the most consequential misunderstandings. The article proceeds via a series of nine vignettes describing misunderstandings of statistical uncertainty in educational assessment and school…

Studies examining the important predictors of academic achievement of elementary teacher education students help us to understand the predictors of student achievement. These studies (House, 2000b; Ting & Bryant, 2001; Zheng, Saunders, Shelley, & Whalen, 2002)focus on the relationship between academic achievement and a number of cognitive…

The aim of the research described in this article was the development of an instrument to measure social emotional characteristics and special educational and pedagogical needs of students in the last grade of primary education. Questionnaires were developed for teachers as well as for students. Exploratory factor analyses showed that the factors…

The Division of Policy, Planning, and Research has assembled the Tennessee Higher Education Fact Book which is a compilation of statistical information pertaining to higher education in Tennessee. This Fact Book contains tables and charts with data relevant to enrollment and transfers, persistence and attainment, and fiscal information about…

This study examined differences in nine factors between a group of the highest-performing needs high schools (HPHN) and a group of the lowest performing high-needs (LPHN) high schools using teacher responses from a national dataset. The factors are: (1) shared mission and goals; (2) professional development; (3) collaboration among teachers (4)…

For 15 years, "Newark Kids Count" has provided insight into the challenges facing Newark's children and families. This report presents the portrait of Newark children in 2010. A special section on Newark charter schools is also presented. Advocates for Children of New Jersey's (ACNJ's) goal in choosing this topic was to inform the…

As a part of the teacher licensure program at the graduate level at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the M.Ed. Licensure candidate is required to complete an action research project during a 3-semester-hour course that coincides with the 9-semester-hour student teaching experience. This course, Education 590 Culminating…

A job analysis was conducted to define the knowledge domain in which newly licensed (certified) English teachers must be knowledgeable to perform competently. The results of the job analysis were to be used to develop test specifications for the Subject Assessment in English of the Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers. A…

Essay questions and the effects of their use on student scores are examined by a teacher through collaborative action research. Collaboration with the teacher's graduate school faculty resulted in refinements to the research question and development of a practical study methodology. During the two years of the study, the teacher taught four…

Steps involved in the item analysis and scaling of the 1990 edition of Forms A and B of the Nevada High School Proficiency Examinations (NHSPEs) are described. Pilot tests of Forms A and B of the 47-item reading and 45-item mathematics tests were each administered to random samples of more than 600 eleventh-grade students. A computer program was…

This report presents the results and sample items of a reading test and a mathematics test administered to Year 5 and Year 7 primary level students in 1989 in the Northern Territory of Australia. The Primary Assessment Program (PAP) monitors achievement in English and Mathematics in urban schools. All students in Years 5 and 7 are tested in…

This study, part of a larger effort to develop a methodology for evaluating intelligent computer systems (Artificial Intelligence Systems), explores the use of benchmarking as an evaluation technique. Benchmarking means comparing the performance of intelligent computer systems with human performance on the same task. Benchmarking in evaluation has…

A comprehensive assessment of the literacy proficiencies of Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) and Employment Service/Unemployment Insurance (ES/UI) participants was conducted by the Department of Labor. The survey responses of a sample of 2,501 JTPA applicants and 3,277 ES/UI participants were scored, weighted, analyzed, and used to develop a…

In the fall of 1990, seven teachers at the Ralph Bunche School, a public elementary school in Harlem (New York) began an experiment in school restructuring they called the Computer Mini-School. An unexpected outcome of the project was an increase in standardized test scores among their 120 students. This outcome is explored. It is argued that the…

Test scores on the Test of Basic Concepts, a school readiness test, were compared with actual performance in school for 186 low-scoring and 133 high-scoring groups of first graders from Spain at the beginning of the school year to explore the issues of competence testing and prediction of performance. The measure of school performance was derived…