Possible relationships between five test examiner characteristics (gender, race, tenure, experience as a test administrator, and experience as a test developer or scorer) and six student achievement scores (reading, writing, language usage, mathematics, science, and social studies) were studied at the school level in a statewide assessment. The…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and other recent changes in federal legislation have placed greater emphasis on accountability in large-scale testing. Included in this emphasis are regulations that require assessments to be accessible. States are accountable for the success of all students, and tests should be designed in a way that…

In this first issue of Forum Focus, we summarize emerging research and practical evidence that quality matters and push forward to ask the questions: Is quality measurable? Is it malleable? We bring a youth-centered lens to our review, looking for examples that define quality from the perspective of what young people need to heal, grow and…

This collection of lesson plans for teaching English as a Second Language includes the following: "You Scratched Me!" which has students examine verbs in three forms (base, past, and progressive) together with questions, accelerating the memorization and understanding of verb forms and tenses; "Getting Acquainted/Inferential Thinking," which…

In this study we test the performance of some nonexperimental estimators of impacts applied to an educational intervention--reduction in class size--where achievement test scores were the outcome. We compare the nonexperimental estimates of the impacts to "true impact" estimates provided by a random-assignment design used to assess the…

The importance of instructing gifted students in correlational reasoning is emphasized, with attention to what the skill involves and why it is difficult to learn; effective teaching strategies; and successful programs in whole-class, cooperative-learning, and computer formats. Implications in programming for gifted students are discussed. (SW)

Describes the model for decision making used in inferential statistics and real-world applications that parallel the statistical model. Discusses two activities that ask students to write about a personal decision-making experience and create a mock trial in which the class makes the decision of guilt or innocence. (MDH)

To assist a class of Hispanic teenagers whose English reading and writing skills were limited, a program using both Spanish and English, or a bilingual model, was implemented. Application of the "alternate language" approach is described. (11 references) (LB)

The ability of 378 elementary school students (aged 9-12 years) in Israel to extract "lawfulnesses" (invariants) from experience and to react to error by reexamining the problem and finding the error was studied on a self-paced inference task. Results are discussed in terms of postfailure reflectivity and postfailure impulsivity. (SLD)

The R.I.T.E. method is described, an activity that enables gifted students to use a multifaceted approach to develop the kinds of critical reading skills necessary for constructing meaning as they read an informational text. The steps of the R.I.T.E. method (Read, Interrogate, Tell, and Explore) are outlined. (Contains 6 references.) (CR)

Reports results of an extensive needs-analysis for English-as-a-Second-Language-speaking graduate nursing students. The analysis focuses on skills required for school, clinical practice, and interaction with a multicultural, socially stratified patient population. (Author/VWL)

This investigation examined the effects of authentic Francophone web sites on cultural learning at the intermediate level. Fifty-four students "surfed" eight web sites. A pre-posttest design assessed long-term gains in culture and the learning of practices, products, and perspectives from exposure to a curriculum with Internet activities. Eight…

Our editor-at-large puts questions to a political scientist--the former higher-education advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq--who replies with skepticism about prospects for our efforts to restore a university system in Iraq and reconstitute that troubled society in our image. Building an informed democracy, John Agresto…

Introduction: This research addresses preschoolers' intuitive understanding of rectilinear movement and some variables which affect it, and the type of arguments used when related knowledge states are justified. A first working hypothesis is that the resolution of practical, functional situations would be based on self-regulation processes. A…

During the last years, development of open learning environments that support effectively their users has been a challenge for the research community of educational technologies. The open interactive nature of these environments results in users experiencing difficulties in coping with the plethora of available functions, especially during their…