In this article we introduce language acquisition researchers to two broad areas of applied statistics that can improve the way data are analyzed. First we argue that visual summaries of information are as vital as numerical ones, and suggest ways to improve them. Specifically, we recommend choosing boxplots over barplots and adding locally…

Over the last decade, and in the context of the fiscal crisis in the nation in general and in higher education in particular, a debate has raged over the value of humanities research. Various commentators have argued that unlike nonhumanities disciplines, fields such as English studies and other humanistic disciplines bring very little into their…

We study the link between parental selection and children criminality in a new context. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany experienced an unprecedented temporary drop in fertility driven by economic uncertainty. We exploit this natural experiment to estimate that the children from these (smaller) cohorts are 40 percent more likely to…

Systematic reviews are used to inform practice, and develop guidelines and protocols. A questionnaire to quantify the risk of bias in systematic reviews, the review paper assessment (RPA) tool, was developed and tested. A search of electronic databases provided a data set of review articles that were then independently reviewed by two assessors…

Standardized-test scores are increasingly important indicators of school success. But how robust are school-performance ratings when they are based on measures derived from these scores? In my thesis, using data from Houston Independent School District (HISD) and New York State (NYS), I examined the robustness of school-performance ratings across…

Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal better quality teaching and academic value-added, or higher ability, sought-after intakes. In our research, we show decisively that value-added drives households' demand for good schooling. However,…

Purpose: Adults with language-based disabilities are known to have deficits in oral language; however, less is known about their written language skills. Two studies were designed to characterize the writing of adults with language-based disabilities. Method: In Study 1, 60 adults, 30 with language impairment and 30 with typical language,…

As all physicists know, all units are arbitrary. The numbering system is anthropocentric; for example, the Celsius scale of temperature has 100 degrees between the boiling point of water at STP and the freezing point of water. The number 100 is chosen because human beings have 10 fingers. The best units might be based on physical constants, for…

Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) discovered a strong and rather general memory advantage for word material processed in a survival-related context. One possible explanation of this effect conceives survival processing as a special form of encoding: Nature specifically "tuned" our memory systems to process and remember…

Evidence from recent research suggests that in the UK the public perception of errors in national examinations is that they are simply mistakes; events that are preventable. This perception predominates over the more sophisticated technical view that errors arise from many sources and create an inevitable variability in assessment outcomes. The…

Despite the widespread popularity of growth curve analysis, few studies have investigated robust growth curve models. In this article, the "t" distribution is applied to model heavy-tailed data and contaminated normal data with outliers for growth curve analysis. The derived robust growth curve models are estimated through Bayesian…

School voucher and education tax credit programs have proliferated in the United States over the past two decades. Advocates have argued that they will enable families to become active consumers in a free and competitive education marketplace, but some fear that these programs may in fact bring with them a heavy regulatory burden that could stifle…

This paper was designed to explore the means in the field of observing classroom teaching/learning from both a general, and an "English as a Foreign Language" (EFL), viewpoint. The aim was to browse the relevant literature, and lead to consider observation tools which might serve to research in EFL. This paper summarizes the reading by…

In a provocative and influential paper, Jesse Rothstein (2010) finds that standard value added models (VAMs) suggest implausible future teacher effects on past student achievement, a finding that obviously cannot be viewed as causal. This is the basis of a falsification test (the Rothstein falsification test) that appears to indicate bias in VAM…

Recent research (Strunk and Reardon forthcoming) applies Partial Independence Item Response (PIIR) models to teacher bargaining agreements in California to calculate the latent restrictiveness of these contracts. Further research (Strunk and Grissom 2010; Strunk forthcoming) tests the external validity of these estimates. Given that much research…