This report presents a summary of the findings of Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 monitoring reviews, fulfilling the reporting requirement, Section 641A(f), of the Head Start Act. It highlights the enhancements made to the FY 2012 monitoring review system, summarizes grantee review outcomes, and describes the types of findings most commonly identified in FY…

A number of states are using or exploring the use of formative assessment in their districts and schools to improve learning outcomes for students. Findings from the literature suggest that formative assessment: (1) Is a systematic, continuous process used during instruction that provides a feedback loop to check for progress and detect learning…

Groundbreaking new findings from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project hold the potential to answer crucial questions about how to assess teachers' performance. For the past two years, MET researchers have conducted a research project of unprecedented scope, involving 3,000 teachers in six school…

Recent findings of passageless comprehension by college readers have added to the fallout with standardized reading comprehension tests and have called for theoretically and psychometrically stronger options. Reviewing the research literature, this paper suggests the maze test as an option for college reading assessment. The existing evidence,…

This article has as its main focus the contextual factors connected with teachers' teamwork. Firstly, it deals with the question of how to create reflections among teachers on the topic of teamwork. Their written answers function as empirical data for researchers and also as contributions to the further professional development of teamwork.…

Testing factorial invariance has recently gained more attention in different social science disciplines. Nevertheless, when examining factorial invariance, it is generally assumed that the observations are independent of each other, which might not be always true. In this study, we examined the impact of testing factorial invariance in multilevel…

A number of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of brief cognitive-behavioral interventions for treating childhood nighttime fears. The purpose of the present study is to determine whether behavior changes could be initiated and maintained with home monitoring and reinforcement alone. Sixteen children, ages 6 to 11, with severe, disruptive…

Evaluation of programs or projects is often perceived as a threat. This is to a great extent related to the anticipated use of evaluation for accountability, which is often prioritized at the expense of using evaluation as a learning tool. Frequently it is argued that there is a trade-off between these two evaluation functions. An alternative…

The DIF-free-then-DIF (DFTD) strategy consists of two steps: (a) select a set of items that are the most likely to be DIF-free and (b) assess the other items for DIF (differential item functioning) using the designated items as anchors. The rank-based method together with the computer software IRTLRDIF can select a set of DIF-free polytomous items…

Within a globalised world that has ever changing social, economic, cultural and legal influences, higher education providers have a responsibility to equip graduates with the skills necessary to meet these demands. Pedagogic research shows that students' motivation is often driven by assessment and therefore the challenge for programmes is to find…

Research on indicators related to the state of child well-being is a growing field that has experienced several changes over time. The growing supply of data on children, as well as the need to facilitate conclusions and to track trends, has led researchers to develop a number of child well-being indexes. This paper critically reviews the most…

The current study tested several competing models of the autism phenotype using data from modules 1 and 3 of the ADOS. Participants included individuals with ASDs aged 3-18 years (N = 1,409) from the AGRE database. Confirmatory factor analyses were performed on total samples and subsamples based on age and level of functioning. Three primary…

This study explored the impact of partial credit scoring of one type of innovative items (multiple-response items) in a computerized adaptive version of a large-scale licensure pretest and operational test settings. The impacts of partial credit scoring on the estimation of the ability parameters and classification decisions in operational test…

Although randomized studies have high internal validity, generalizability of the estimated causal effect from randomized clinical trials to real-world clinical or educational practice may be limited. We consider the implication of randomized assignment to treatment, as compared with choice of preferred treatment as it occurs in real-world…

Elementary students (N = 104) at risk for severe behavior problems or with special education eligibility participated in three validity studies of the daily progress report (DPR) used in a Tier 2 behavioral intervention known as "Check, Connect, and Expect" (CCE). In Study 1, the relationship between teachers' ratings of students'…