"Collaboration" is a ubiquitously championed concept and widely recognized across the public and private sectors as the foundation on which the capacity for addressing complex issues is predicated. For those invested in organizational improvement, high-quality collaboration has become no less than an imperative. However, evaluators and program…

This article discusses the use of propensity scoring in experimental program evaluations to estimate impacts for subgroups defined by program features and participants' program experiences. The authors discuss estimation issues and provide specification tests. They also discuss the use of an overlooked data collection design--obtaining predictions…

Encouraging continuous improvement in the quality, scale and breadth of online education, the Sloan Consortium invites practitioners to share effective practices. This report synthesizes effective practices submitted by Sloan-C members to the online collection at http://www.sloanconsortium.org/effective as of November 2010. The synthesis includes…

This report deals with a variety of ways that have been, or could be, used to interpret the scales used in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Policymakers, researchers, and other users of assessment results need to understand the methods used for reporting NAEP. Having a reference is particularly important as the methods of…

Comparative data and results of validation and standard-setting studies are presented for five subject-matter tests for teacher certification in two states. The five tests evaluated were available from the Educational Testing Service (ETS): one National Teacher Examination specialty area test (special education); and four tests from a consortium…

A range of electronic resources, including video-based instruction, are used to promote cybersafety to young people at school. This evaluation analyzed seven distinct programs that use electronic media in Internet safety initiatives in schools. The findings highlight emerging evidence on successful approaches to engage children in assessing risky…

This study assessed the invariance in the factor structure of the "Test of English as a Foreign Language"™ Internet-based test (TOEFL® iBT) across subgroups of test takers who differed in native language and exposure to the English language. The subgroups were defined by (a) Indo-European and Non-Indo-European language family, (b)…

Secondary career-technical education programs in Mississippi are faced with many challenges resulting from sweeping educational reforms at the national and state levels. Schools and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for providing true learning activities to every student in the classroom. This accountability is measured through…

Secondary vocational-technical education programs in Mississippi are faced with many challenges resulting from sweeping educational reforms at the national and state levels. Schools and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for providing true learning activities to every student in the classroom. This accountability is measured through…

Preservice teachers enrolled in the first portion of an undergraduate education program at the Florida State University were assigned to develop case studies based on their experience working in local elementary schools. The case studies were to include research from the scholarly literature of the field using a rubric developed by the instructor…

Although researchers in higher education propose alternatives to traditional approaches to assessment, traditional methods are commonly used in college or university science courses. The purpose of this study was to explore the feasibility and validity of Prospective Science Teachers' (PSTs) concept maps as authentic assessment tools in a…

This book is a guide to categorizing, measuring, testing, and assessing aspects of language, and is intended for language teachers, speech therapists and other language-related practitioners, and researchers, in conjunction with other resources on research methods and statistics. The first part is a discussion of basic terminology and the varied…

Large scale surveys usually employ a complex sampling design and as a consequence, no standard methods for estimation of the standard errors associated with the estimates of population means are available. Resampling methods, such as jackknife or bootstrap, are often used, with reference to their properties of robustness and reduction of bias. A…

Free-response (FR) item formats, such as essay questions, are popular in educational assessment. The criticisms against FR items are that they are more expensive to score, take up more testing time, provide less content coverage, and are less reliable than multiple-choice (MC) items. For these reasons, FR items are often combined with MC items.…

The amount of variability contributed to large-scale performance assessment scores by raters is a constant concern for those who wish to use results from these assessments for educational decisions. This study approaches the problem by examining the behaviors of essay scorers who demonstrate different levels of proficiency with a holistic scoring…