This study extends validity evidence for the Coaching Efficacy Scale (CES; Feltz, Chase, Moritz, & Sullivan, 1999) by providing an evaluation of the psychometric properties of the instrument from previously collected data on high school and college coaches from United States. Data were fitted to a multidimensional item response theory model.…

This study examines the predictive relationships among 309 Asian American and 9471 European American parents' beliefs, expectations, and involvement, and their children's math and reading achievement trajectories during children's transition to school. Data came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), an ongoing…

"Personalised learning" and the value of national assessment data in achieving it have been identified by the UK Secretary of State for Education and Skills as essential for raising educational standards. Employing multilevel analysis, this paper compares children's end of primary school (Key Stage 2) test scores with those they achieved…

The history of risk assessment in criminal justice has been written on several occasions. In this article, the authors assess progress since Andrews, Bonta, and Hoge's statement of the human service principles of risk-need-responsivity (RNR) and professional discretion. The review is conducted in the context of the advent of the fourth generation…

Risk assessments generally rely on actuarial measures of criminal history. However, these static measures do not address changes in risk as a result of intervention. To this end, this study examines the basic psychometric properties of the TCU Criminal Thinking Scales (TCU CTS), a brief (self-rating) instrument developed to assess cognitive…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates that free, appropriate, public education (FAPE) be provided to children with educationally-defined disabilities. The Individualized Education Program (IEP) requirement (i.e., team meeting and document) is the method for providing FAPE to children. Previous research has failed to consider…

Accountability is perhaps the most significant issue facing educators today. How can school professionals document that their work results in significant positive outcomes? This issue is especially critical to the many special and general educators moving into collaborative partnerships, given the dramatic shifts in their professional roles…

The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a series of fluency-based measures designed to assess early literacy skills. These fluency-based measures function as predictors of future reading performance and target critical component skills required to learn to read. This study was conducted to establish the convergent…

Inclusion of students with disabilities, including children and youth diagnosed with emotional and behavioral disorders, has been a prominent and contentious issue for decades. Yet, in spite of the extraordinary attention given this topic, there has been a general absence of empirically sound research to guide policy and practice. This article…

Parents of pupils who were attending elementary schools in a typical medium-size city of Japan were surveyed. Respondents who had a close friend who has a person with intellectual disability (ID) as a family member or who had experience of voluntary work or job-related contact showed clear favorable attitudes. However, they differed greatly from…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the admission process for an undergraduate research program in health science and to assess the students' statement of purpose for entering the program. Admission data (high school marks, supplementary application information, and overall rater score) and first-year GPA…

Recent studies that purport to estimate the costs of constitutionally adequate education have been described as either a "gold standard" that should guide legislative school finance policy design and judicial evaluation, or as pure "alchemy." Methods for estimating the cost of constitutionally adequate education can be roughly…

A new measure of reading comprehension, the Diagnostic Assessment of Reading Comprehension (DARC), designed to reflect central comprehension processes while minimizing decoding and language demands, was pilot tested. We conducted three pilot studies to assess the DARC's feasibility, reliability, comparability across Spanish and English,…

There are indications that the new technologies could have radical implications for conventional teaching and learning processes. It notes that, in reconfiguring how teachers and learners gain access to knowledge and information, the new technologies challenge conventional conceptions of both teaching and learning materials, and teaching and…

Based on in-depth data from nine demographically similar schools, the study asks five questions in regard to key aspects of the improvement process and that speak to the consequential validity of accountability indicators: Do schools that differ widely according to system performance criteria also differ on the quality of the educational…