Enacting the vision of NCTM's "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" depends on effective teacher professional development. This 7-year study of 48 projects in the National Science Foundation's Local Systemic Change Through Teacher Enhancement Initiative investigates the relationship between professional development and…

This study investigated the contribution of child characteristics and parenting environment to the relationship between family SES/demographic characteristics and maternal language to infants. 1157 children were drawn from a representative sample of 1292 infants born to mothers in rural Appalachian counties and rural counties in southern minority…

The aim of this research was to identify, develop, and evaluate empirically new reasoning item types that might be used to broaden the analytical measure of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) General Test and to strengthen its construct validity. Six item types were selected for empirical evaluation, including the two currently used in the GRE…

This study explores the potential for using a computer-based scoring procedure for the formulating-hypotheses (F-H) item. This item type presents a situation and asks the examinee to generate explanations for it. Each explanation is judged right or wrong, and the number of creditable explanations is summed to produce an item score. Scores were…

This study examined three questions about measures of accomplishments--notable attainments that have been publicly recognized: their pseudoipsativity, the correspondence between quantity and quality scores, and their dimensionality. Comparable samples of graduate students described their accomplishments on a questionnaire or judged the similarity…

A study examined the correlation between students' placement test scores on a multiple-choice test and their passing rate on the Advanced Placement (AP) language exam. Statistics show that the number of students taking advanced placement tests is increasing, and a review of the literature supports the need for further research in the area of…

A Monte Carlo study was conducted to compare the efficiency of Listwise deletion, Pairwise deletion, Allvalue, and Samemean methods in estimating the correlation matrix from data that had randomly occurring missing values. The four methods were compared in a 3x3x4 factorial design representing sample size, proportion of incomplete records in the…

According to the Bureau of Census, almost 13 million Mexican-Americans live in the United States. Since parental involvement is important to the success of Mexican-American children in school, an analysis of the role of trust in such involvement is presented in this paper. It reports the findings of a study that explored the issue of trust as it…

A study investigated various developmental relationships between the attitudes of students toward reading and their reading achievement, with the intention of providing additional information concerning attitudes and attitude testing within school programs. Subjects, 876 students in grades 1 through 8 from a white, middle-class rural community,…

Correlation coefficients are frequently reported in educational and psychological research. The robustness properties and optimality among practical approximations when phi does not equal 0 with moderate sample sizes are not well documented. Three major approximations and their variations are examined: (1) a normal approximation of Fisher's Z,…

This paper focuses on three aspects related to the conceptualization and application of canonical correlation analysis as a dominant statistical model: (1) partial canonical correlation analysis and its application in statistical testing; (2) the relation between canonical correlation analysis and discriminant analysis; and (3) the relation…

A study examined spatial factors (minority population, segregation, racial differences in the workforce and the educational system, and minority public officials) and organizational factors (ownership and circulation) that may predict newsroom minority employment. Data for this secondary analysis of 172 newspapers were gathered from earlier…

The present paper suggests that multivariate techniques are very important in social science research, and that canonical correlation analysis may be particularly useful. The logic of canonical analysis is explained and discussed. The necessity of using replicability/generalizability analyses is argued. It is suggested that cross-validation…

To validate a group phonics test designed to measure students' phonics knowledge, a study examined possible causal relationships of phonics knowledge and sight word recognition, sight word fluency, general reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Subjects, 95 first graders, 95 second graders, and 95 third graders chosen at random from 3 schools…

A study analyzed the readability of seven central Florida newspapers (one of which is a college newspaper) and "USA Today.""Rightwriter," a grammar checker and readability computer program, was used to evaluate front page articles for each of the eight newspapers. The readability formulas invoked in the readability program…