The McVay Revised Readiness for Online Learning questionnaire was given to 116 traditional on-campus and 31 distance education students. The students were enrolled in an introductory class in computer applications on an urban campus of a mid-western community college. Multiple regression equations were developed with the survey scores and the…

This paper investigated the predictive ability of expressive vocabulary size and lexical composition at age 2 on later language and literacy skills from ages 3 through 11. Multivariate analysis of covariance was performed to compare 16 language and literacy outcomes between children with large expressive vocabulary size at 24 months (N = 1,073)…

Twenty-first century is seeing changes in the nature of work, the workforce, and employment practices. These changes, along with increased employer need to select employees who will have the best fit with particular jobs in order to increase return on investment, are leading employers toward greater use of preemployment assessments. The purpose of…

Many individuals who attempt to enter teacher education programs are precluded from doing so because of an inability to pass basic skills tests. The authors examine whether these tests are simply a gate that needs to be passed through or whether they provide useful early information about how individuals are likely to perform on subsequent…

Seventeen state-sponsored residential math and science schools have been created across the country to direct talented teens toward STEM careers. Admission is selective, based on competitive grades, standardized test scores, and references. Most of the schools also require preadmission interviews. However, selection interviews may be challenged as…

Universal screening measures are an integral component of any tiered system of instructional delivery. Recent studies of screening measures have often excluded examinations of bias in predictive validity. The present study examined a common screening instrument for evidence of bias in predictive validity across the four disaggregation categories…

The latest word about the new SAT is this: It gives colleges about the same information as the old one did. Last week, the College Board announced that the recent changes in the SAT had not substantially altered how accurately it predicts first-year grades. The news prompted applause from the test's proponents, scorn from its critics, and little…

Data from instruments which are technically adequate and which inform instruction are not only considered best practice, but are legally mandated by laws such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act and No Child Left Behind. The Phonics Diagnostic Inventory (PDI) was designed to assess students' proficiency with specific…

Metacognition is widely studied for its influence on the effectiveness of learning. With Exploratory Computer-Based Learning Environments (ECBLE), metacognition is found to be especially important because these environments require adaptive metacognitive control by the learners due to their open-ended structure that allows for multiple learning…

Current emotion knowledge (EK) measures examine only one component of the multifaceted construct. We examined the reliability and the construct validity of a new measure of EK, the emotion matching task (EMT). The EMT consists of four parts which measure the components of receptive EK, expressive EK, emotion situation knowledge, and emotion…

This article describes the 2009 revision of the Dutch Rating System for Test Quality and presents the results of test ratings from almost 30 years. The rating system evaluates the quality of a test on seven criteria: theoretical basis, quality of the testing materials, comprehensiveness of the manual, norms, reliability, construct validity, and…

With universities having difficulty attracting students to study information technology (IT), the scores needed for entry into IT degrees have dropped markedly. IT schools are thus having to cope by adjusting their introductory courses to ensure that students will still learn what is expected but without negatively impacting on pass rates. This…

This paper analyzes the impact of voucher design on student sorting, and more specifically investigates whether there are feasible ways of designing vouchers that can reduce or eliminate student sorting. It studies these questions in the context of the first five years of the Milwaukee voucher program. Much of the existing literature investigates…

A disconnect between the educational requirements of secondary institutions and postsecondary institutions often results in a large percentage of first-year college students requiring remediation (Moss & Bordelon, 2007). As such, postsecondary institutions administer tests to incoming students for placement into courses of the appropriate…

In this study, the authors examined the factor structure and temporal stability of the Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale (CAPS; G. L. Flett, P. L. Hewitt, D. J. Boucher, L. A. Davidson, & Y. Munro, 1997) in 2 samples of adolescents (15-16 years old). In Sample 1 (n = 624), confirmatory factor analysis did not support a 2-factor structure…