A recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, "America's Private Public Schools," has received considerable attention and includes some controversial recommendations. The report's authors suggest the existence of what they term "private public schools," and they argue that the existence of these "exclusive" public schools justifies the…

This study investigated whether children with language learning disability (LLD) differed from typically-developing peers in their ability to learn meanings of novel words presented during reading. Fifteen 9-11-year-old children with LLD and 15 typically-developing peers read four passages containing 20 nonsense words. Word learning was assessed…

Perfectionistic concerns (i.e., negative reactions to failures, concerns over others' criticism and expectations, and nagging self-doubts) are a putative risk factor for depressive symptoms. This study proposes and supports the existential model of perfectionism and depressive symptoms (EMPDS), a conceptual model aimed at explaining why…

Despite all the speeches, articles, and meetings about data-based instructional decision making, the author's observation after more than 20 years of working with middle and high school teams is that teachers and administrators often make important instructional decisions on the basis of historical precedent, anecdotal information, experience, or…

P. R. Killeen's (2005a) probability of replication ("p[subscript rep]") of an experimental result is the fiducial Bayesian predictive probability of finding a same-sign effect in a replication of an experiment. "p[subscript rep]" is now routinely reported in "Psychological Science" and has also begun to appear in…

In this study, 180 Norwegian fifth-grade students with a mean age of 10.5 years were administered measures of word recognition skills, strategic text processing, reading motivation and working memory. Six months later, the same students were given three different multiple-choice reading comprehension measures. Based on three forced-order…

This study estimates the causal effects of six corrective actions for children's problem behaviors, comparing four types of longitudinal analyses that correct for pre-existing differences in a cohort of 1,464 4- and 5-year-olds from Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) data. Analyses of residualized gain scores found…

Rough set theory (RST) is an emerging technique used to deal with problems in data mining and knowledge acquisition. However, the RST approach has not been widely explored in the field of academic achievement. This investigation developed an improved RST (IMRST) model, which employs linear discriminant analysis to determine a reduct of RST, and…

During the past 30 years, the discipline of Leadership Studies has pervaded several academic domains including business management. Recently, leadership theory has been applied to sports management. The current study sought to inform this line of inquiry and was based on Chelladurai (1979), multidimensional model of leadership. The purpose of the…

Comprehending a second language is a complex process that occurs with a few external signs along the way. Out of recent research has come a growing understanding that comprehension is not just understanding words, sentences, or even texts, but involves building a model within the mind of the comprehender (Hammadou, 1991). This paper aims at…

Despite the recognized need to increase interdisciplinary collaboration, there are few information resources available to provide researchers with an overview of scientific communities--topics under investigation by various groups, and patterns of collaboration among groups. The tools that are available are designed for expert social network…

In this study, we are interested to see the impact of self-discipline on students' knowledge and learning. Self-discipline can influence both learning rate as well as knowledge accumulation over time. We used a Knowledge Tracing (KT) model to make inferences about students' knowledge and learning. Based on a widely used questionnaire, we measured…

[Slides] presented at the Annual Meeting of National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) in San Diego, CA in April 2009. This presentation describes how the vehicles for gathering student evidence--task models and test specifications--are developed.

The recent shift toward greater accountability has put many educational leaders in a position where they are expected to collect and use increasing amounts of data to inform their decision making. Yet, because many programs that prepare administrators, including school business officials, do not require a statistics course or a course that is more…

This paper portrays the inferences that employers in Greece draw from particular aspects of study programmes, as recorded on educational qualifications. Based on semi-structured interviews with human resource managers in 37 industrial and service organisations and general directors of careers offices in eight higher education institutions, and…