The Leading Educators Fellowship program selects promising mid-career teachers through a competitive application process and develops their skills as leaders of school improvement efforts. The specific objectives of the program are to (1) increase the leadership skills and capacity of teacher leaders in order to improve student achievement in…

We have witnessed, over the past century, an evolution in the manner in which students with disabilities are educated. Indeed, the quality of education students with special needs receive, in many ways, may be more aptly termed a revolution -- from a legal and pedagogical perspective. The tremendous strides special education has made during this…

Experts use their domain expertise and knowledge of examinees' ability levels as they write test items. The expert test writer can then estimate the difficulty of the test items subjectively. However, an objective method for assigning difficulty to a test item would capture the cognitive demands imposed on the examinee as well as be…

In multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) questionnaires, items measuring different attributes are presented in blocks, and participants have to rank order the items within each block (fully or partially). Such comparative formats can reduce the impact of numerous response biases often affecting single-stimulus items (aka rating or Likert scales).…

This study examined students' perspectives on the use of assessment criteria and rubrics in graphic design studio at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. This assessment strategy was introduced with the desire to improve students' participation and involvement in studio-based learning programme. At the end of the semester, a…

As a result of competitive dance television shows, interest in tap dance seems to have increased in the past few years. Tap dance is a challenging and fun lifetime physical activity that is appropriate for people of all ages. It is an excellent activity for K-12 physical education programs, higher education, parks and recreation facilities,…

Narrowly defined personality facet scores are commonly reported and used for making decisions in clinical and organizational settings. Although these facets are typically related, scoring is usually carried out for a single facet at a time. This method can be ineffective and time consuming when personality tests contain many highly correlated…

The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) benchmarks are frequently used to make important decision regarding student performance. More information, however, is needed to understand if the nationally-derived benchmarks created by the DIBELS system provide the most accurate criterion for evaluating reading proficiency. The…

Purpose: Performance evaluation informs professional development and helps school personnel improve student learning. Although psychometric literature indicates that a rational, sound, and coherent standard-setting process adds to the credibility of an assessment, few studies have empirically examined the decision-making process. This article…

This article presents strategies for using two types of essay-writing rubrics in a developmental English class of students transitioning into college-level writing. One checklist rubric is student-facing, designed to serve as a guide for students throughout the writing process and as a self-assessment tool. The other checklist rubric is…

Teacher observations have become a national education phenomenon, mandated by federal policies and promoted by philanthropists. They are crucial components of teacher evaluation systems that often have high stakes for teachers and school systems, but have sparked little innovation. Recent calls to make teacher evaluations better, faster, and…

The discourse that an educated workforce is essential for a prosperous and sustainable economy in a knowledge-based society has invited heightened policy interest in higher education. In effect, many industrialized countries are approaching, or have already reached universal access, with the majority of their age cohorts enrolling in higher…

Base-rate neglect refers to the tendency for people to underweight base-rate probabilities in favor of diagnostic information. It is commonly held that base-rate neglect occurs because effortful (Type 2) reasoning is required to process base-rate information, whereas diagnostic information is accessible to fast, intuitive (Type 1) processing…

Students typically create concept maps while they view the material they are trying to learn. In these circumstances, concept mapping serves as an elaborative study activity--students are not required to retrieve the material they are learning. In 2 experiments, we examined the effectiveness of concept mapping when it is used as a retrieval…

This study examined the influence of phonotactic probability on word recognition in English-speaking toddlers. Typically developing toddlers completed a preferential looking paradigm using familiar words, which consisted of either high or low phonotactic probability sound sequences. The participants' looking behavior was recorded in response to…