The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 Video Study is a follow-up and expansion of the TIMSS 1995 Video Study of mathematics teaching. Larger and more ambitious than the first, the 1999 study investigated eighth-grade science teaching as well as mathematics teaching, expanded the number of countries, and included…

This article reviews the emergence of secondary analysis of data (SA) as a methodology for examining questions of relevance for social work and its implications for student education. Given the rapid expansion of available data archives from agencies, governmental and research sources, and technological advances in accessibility and ease of use,…

Rats obtained food-pellet reinforcers by nose poking a lighted key. Experiment 1 examined resistance to extinction following single-schedule training with different variable-interval schedules, ranging from a mean interval of 16 min to 0.25 min. That is, for each schedule, the rats received 20 consecutive daily baseline sessions and then a session…

This is the second part of a four-part report on data-driven decision-making. Widespread attention to school accountability, driven by state and federal mandates, has increased the stakes for all schools. These mandates have made more data available to educators at all levels, but they have not been as effective in encouraging teachers to use…

Most teachers welcome the opportunity to become more effective educators, and look for ways to improve their own teaching practice. With the dizzying array of state tests, district assessments, and program-specific rubrics, many are at a loss as to how to begin using data to improve their practice. There are many ways teachers can use data to…

Over the past five years, the No Child Left Behind Act, with its mandates for collecting and documenting student achievement statistics, has fueled a surge in the volume of data collected by schools, districts, and state education departments. This information explosion has gone hand in hand with technology's growing affordability and…

This study examines cross-national differences in returns to literacy skills and explores possible explanations for such differences. Data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) are analyzed using multilevel models. Returns to literacy skills are higher in liberal market economies (LMEs) than in social market economies (SMEs).…

Choosing the most appropriate method to handle missing data during analyses is one of the most challenging decisions confronting researchers. Often, missing values are just ignored rather than replaced with a reliable imputation method. Six methods of data imputation were used to replace missing data from two data sets of varying sizes; this…

This paper puts forth a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to estimating higher education institutions' per-student education costs (PSCs) in an effort to redress a number of methodological problems endemic to such estimations, particularly the allocation of shared expenditures between education and other institutional activities. An example…

This article examines levels of involvement of weekly church attenders in Catholic parishes in Australia, New Zealand and the United States through an analysis of data from the International Congregational Life Survey. Factor analysis was used to identify four questionnaire items related to parish involvement which were then combined to produce a…

The public school superintendency is the most powerful position in U.S. schools. Yet research has shown that women who hold the position have difficulty talking about power (Brunner, 2000). I designed a mixed methods study to investigate how women school superintendents viewed their uses of power. A survey was sent to all women superintendents…

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--Adolescent (MMPI-A) and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--2 (MMPI-2) True Response Inconsistency (TRIN) scales are measures of acquiescence and nonacquiescence included among the standard validity scales on these instruments. The goals of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of…

The application of multidimensional item response theory (IRT) models to longitudinal educational surveys where students are repeatedly measured is discussed and exemplified. A marginal maximum likelihood (MML) method to estimate the parameters of a multidimensional generalized partial credit model for repeated measures is presented. It is shown…

This exploratory study, a one group pretest-posttest design, investigated the development of elementary preservice teachers' understandings of distribution as expressed in the measures and representations used to compare data distributions. During a semester-long mathematics methods course, participants worked in small groups on two statistical…

Thus, this study examines two beginning teachers' perceptions of a high-stakes test in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Data analysis revealed that the teachers' perceptions towards the test had changed during their first year of teaching. This issue is important because how first-year history teachers perceive and respond to the high stakes tests…