A follow-up study of 16 women who entered a residential early college entrance program at ages 13-17 found that almost all found early college entrance a valuable and stimulating academic experience but also described considerable emotional distress during their college years. Over half of the respondents had left the program before graduation.…

Discusses teacher burnout associated with problems in assessing culturally and linguistically diverse populations. These problems range from lack of understanding of the culture of a given child to knowingly diagnosing children with limited English proficiency. Teachers must adopt creative attitudes that accept all students as unique. (137…

Reports results of a study testing the hypothesis that an inverse relationship exists between level of intimacy between perpetrator and victim in incidents of violence and likelihood of arrest. Notwithstanding relevant elements of probable cause, such as the presence of weapons, witnesses, injury, and the offender, results supported the…

Reports how husband's mental state, antagonism between the disputants, and victim injury affected officers' inferences and referral decisions to battered women shelters and outpatient mental health centers. Officers' age and perceptions of: husband's mental state, wife's credibility, wife's intent, husband's responsibility, and victim injury…

Describes New York City Technical College's "Law through Literature" course, an English elective especially for Legal Assistant Studies students. Quotes from students' essays about personal experiences related to characters/events from Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." Recounts class discussions about influences on…

Describes the use of Rasch item statistics for curricular analysis and instructional decision making. Uses a case study of application of the Rasch model in the pilot testing of items selected for criterion-referenced tests developed for grades one through eight in Charleston (South Carolina) schools. (SLD)

Presents study results examining the effectiveness of teacher praise on children's on-task behavior. Describes Canter's Assertive Discipline, its use in Australia, and the basics of a study of the technique. Reports that all teacher subjects increased rates of praising following training, and all but one student improved levels of behavior.…

The validity of the assumptions under which the ordinal true score test theory was derived was examined using (1) simulation based on classical test theory; (2) a long empirical test with data from 321 sixth graders; and (3) an extensive simulation with 480 datasets based on the 3-parameter model. (SLD)

The difference between item bias and item impact and the way they relate to item validity are discussed from a multidimensional item response theory perspective. The Mantel-Haenszel procedure and the Simultaneous Item Bias strategy are used in a Monte Carlo study to illustrate detection of item bias. (SLD)

Perceptions of 89 black and 121 white female college students about the mother of a 1-year-old infant as a function of race and employment role were explored. Whites anticipated more role-related costs for the employed mother, and blacks anticipated more role-related emotional rewards for employed mothers. (SLD)

Describes a computer-literature project for middle school and high school students that was developed through the Fairfield-Westchester Children's Reading Project (CT) to promote online discussions between students and authors. Classroom activities are described, project financing is discussed, and teacher responses that indicate positive effects…

A procedure is presented for examining the influence of instruction on responses to test items by extending item response theory to incorporate variables illustrating different amounts of opportunity to learn. Data from the Second International Mathematics Study (grade 8 scores for about 7,000 students) illustrate the discussion. (SLD)

A study assessed the impact of a teacher-training workshop at Israel's Ben Gurion University's medical school which focused on classroom interaction. Results of the workshop indicated verbal teacher-student interactions significantly outnumbered individual statements; interactions increased, especially in larger classes; cognitive correspondence…

Stimulated recall was used with 28 classroom teachers to examine their thought processes during instruction. Results indicated that at-risk children received more negative comments about attending and ability than did average achievers. Special education students received more positive and negative comments about attending than did average…

The use of restricted item response models to test hypotheses regarding item difficulty ordering and slope uniformity was demonstrated in a study in which 597 algebra students were asked to solve word problems reflecting various types of cognitive processing. Benefits and limitations of the procedures are discussed. (SLD)