The Education Commission of the States conducted interviews in six school districts in five different states (California, Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, and Texas) to understand how districts can use data most effectively. These districts had used data to dramatically improve student achievement. Districts that make wise use of data have strong…

The effect of different combinations of item response theory (IRT) item parameters (item difficulty, item discrimination, and the guessing probability) on the reliability and construct validity (correlation with the latent trait being measured) of pretest, posttest, and gain scores was analytically examined using the 3-parameter logistic (3PL)…

This study examined ethnic differences in substance use and sexual behavior and whether drinking and drug use constitute risk factors for unsafe sexual practices among Native Hawaiian (NH), Caucasian, and Asian/Pacific Islander (API) high school students in Hawaii. A secondary data analysis of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (1997 and 1999) using a…

The literature in the field of music teacher education describes a tension between the music making and the music teaching in the professional lives of music educators. Yet how do music educators themselves think about their work? This study is an investigation of how six elementary general music teachers who are also performers speak about their…

During workshops held in March and April of 2005, Michigan educators got a lesson in how to benchmark their work against promising practices in higher-performing schools with similar socioeconomic profiles. Teams of teachers, educational supervisors, and principals from 13 elementary and middle schools that had been struggling to make adequate…

This study explored the understandings of data and measurement that school students draw upon, and the ways that they reason from data, when carrying out a practical science inquiry task. The two practical tasks used in the study each involved investigations of the relationships between two independent variables (IVs) and a dependent variable…

Data-driven decision-making (D3M) appears to be the new buzz phrase for this century, the information age. On the education front, teachers and administrators are engaging in data-centered dialog in grade-level meetings, lounges, hallways, and classrooms as they brainstorm toward closing the gap in student achievement. Clearly, such discussion…

This analysis exploits the variation across states in the timing of policy implementation to determine if family cap policies lead to a reduction in births to women aged 15 to 34. Vital statistics birth data for the years 1989 to 1998 offer no such evidence. The data reject a decline in births of more than one percent. The finding is robust to…

In recent years, forensic science has gained popularity thanks in part to high-profile court cases and television programs. Although the cost of forensic equipment and supplies may initially seem too expensive for the typical high school classroom, the author developed an activity that incorporates forensics into her 10th-grade biology curriculum…

The current study evaluates existing and new validity evidence for the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS; Vallerand et al., 1992). We first provide a narrative review synthesizing past research, and then conduct a validity investigation of the scores from the measure. Data analysis using a sample of 1406 American college students provided construct…

Item content-relevance is an important consideration for researchers when developing scales used to measure psychological constructs. Aiken (1980) proposed a statistic, "V," that can be used to summarize item content-relevance ratings obtained from a panel of expert judges. This article proposes the application of the Score confidence interval to…

The translation into French of the Encoded Archival Context (EAC) DTD tag library has been in progress for a few months. It is being carried out by a group of experts gathered by AFNOR, the French national standards agency. The main goal of this group is to foster the interoperability of authority data between archives, libraries and museums, and…

Speaking involves "linearizing" a message into a string of words. This process leaves us vulnerable to being interrupted in such a way that the aborted turn is a misrepresentation of the intended message. Further, because we linearize our messages in standard ways, we are recurrently vulnerable to interruptions at particular…

The performance of three equating methods--the presmoothed equipercentile method, the item response theory (IRT) true score method, and the IRT observed score method--were examined based on three equating criteria: the same distributions property, the first-order equity property, and the second-order equity property. The magnitude of the…

Three forms of objective evaluation were used to assess the impact of a nurture group pilot project on the lives of staff and pupils: Boxall Profiles, the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire, and questionnaires for staff. In addition, a micro study was carried out of two nurture groups using matched control groups. The article provides an…