In order to examine effective behaviors and efficacy, this study examined the relationships between the self-reflection of effective practices by principals and teachers, as assessed by self-efficacy scales, and student achievement, as evaluated by the state assessment program. Other studies determined that effective behaviors preceded and…

As a result of the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, school systems are required to provide a free and appropriate education for all children with disabilities. This legislation was further supported by The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), which guarantees all students with…

Reading Recovery is part of the Every Child a Reader strategy to enable children to make a good start in reading. Reading Recovery is well known to have impressive effects in the shorter term, but less is known about its long-term effectiveness. The present study followed up at the end of Year 4: 120 comparison children, 73 children who had…

Training health professionals within university environments has traditionally focused on face-to-face methods. Practitioners working within the UK National Health Service (NHS) have found it difficult to gain leave from work to attend for study due to the demands of the NHS and staff shortages. In response, the authors developed a distance…

School finance adequacy litigation has become a widely-used means in the efforts to improve educational outcomes for children. This form of litigation has been attempted in nearly every state over the past two decades. Despite its prevalence, its effectiveness remains questionable due to a lack of study relating finance litigation to student…

The goal of this study is to apply a conventional education cost-function approach for estimating the sensitivity of cost models and predicted education costs to the inclusion of school district level racial composition variables and further to test whether race neutral alternatives sufficiently capture the additional costs associated with school…

A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted of Gordon, Kane, and Staiger's (2006) proposal to raise student achievement by identifying and replacing the bottom quartile of novice teachers, using value-added assessment of teacher performance. The cost effectiveness of this proposal was compared to the cost effectiveness of voucher programs, charter…

Web-based computer-aided instruction (CAI) has become increasingly important to medical curricula. This multi-year study investigated the effectiveness of CAI and the factors affecting level of individual use. Three CAI were tested that differed in specificity of applicability to the curriculum and in the level of student interaction with the CAI.…

Correlational methods are compared to an alternative method based on decision theory and logistic regression for providing validity evidence for college admissions and course placement criteria. The advantages and limitations of both methods are examined. The correlation coefficient measures the strength of the linear statistical relationship…

Simulated data were used to investigate the performance of modified versions of the Mantel-Haenszel and standardization methods of differential item functioning (DIF) analysis in computer-adaptive tests (CATs). Each "examinee" received 25 items out of a 75-item pool. A three-parameter logistic item response model was assumed, and…

Administration of the Test of Spoken English (TSE) yields tapes of oral performance on items within six sections of the test. Trained scorers subsequently rate responses using four proficiency scales: pronunciation, grammar, fluency, and overall comprehensibility. This project examined the consistency of statistical relations among TSE scores with…

The purpose of this project was to develop a structural model using several important variables related to academic achievement among top college students. Measures of college grade point average (GPA), high school GPA, score on the ACT Assessment, age, and the number of credit hours taken during the college years were collected from graduating…

The term "statistical significance" is often misunderstood or abused to imply a large effect size. A recent example is in the work of J. P. Rushton (1988, 1990) on differences between Negroids and Caucasoids. Rushton used brain size and cranial size as indicators of intelligence, using Pearson "r"s ranging from 0.03 to 0.35.…

The impact of the use of data arising from balanced incomplete block (BIB) spiralled designs on the chi-square goodness-of-fit test in factor analysis is considered. Data from BIB designs posses a unique pattern of missing data that can be characterized as missing completely at random (MCAR). Standard approaches to factor analyzing such data rest…

Social-emotional competence (SEC) is considered a measure of an individual's total effectiveness in dealing with the environment. To verify empirically whether SEC depends on the intelligence and social maturity of young children, a study of 40 preschool children was undertaken in India. A standardized intelligence test was administered to the…