Shortly after we published "Addressing Flawed Research in Developmental Education" (2012) in the "Journal of Developmental Education," Thomas Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Judith Scott- Clayton from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) wrote a response rebutting several of our claims. Though their response corrects…

Implementation fidelity assessment provides a means of measuring the alignment between the planned program and the implemented program. Unfortunately, the implemented program can differ from the planned program, resulting in ambiguous inferences about the planned program's effectiveness (i.e., it is uncertain if poor results are due to an…

The ability to interpret experimental data is essential to understanding and participating in the process of scientific discovery. Reading primary research articles can be a frustrating experience for undergraduate biology students because they have very little experience interpreting data. To enhance their data interpretation skills, students…

The Human Development Index (HDI) has been instrumental in broadening the discussion of economic development beyond money-metric progress, in particular, by ranking a country against other countries in terms of the well being of their citizens. We propose self-organizing maps to explore similarities among countries using the components of the HDI…

This article is a commentary of a paper by Derek C. Briggs and Frederick A. Peck, "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales That Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth," which describes an elegant potential framework for at least beginning to address three priorities in large-scale assessment that have not been…

Much of recent research in postsecondary developmental education leaves the distinct impression that most remedial courses in community colleges are unsuccessful in helping students and that they should be entirely overhauled. Legislators and administrators are now taking these recommendations very seriously and are ready to cut programs that are…

The present paper aims to review two motivations to conduct "what if" analyses using Excel and "R" to understand the statistical significance tests through the sample size context. "What if" analyses can be used to teach students what statistical significance tests really do and in applied research either prospectively to estimate what sample size…

This paper problematizes contemporary cultural understandings of autism. We make use of the developmental psychology concepts of "Theory of Mind" and "mindblindness" to uncover the meaning of autism as expressed in these concepts. Our concern is that autism is depicted as a puzzle and that this depiction governs not only the way Western culture…

Numeracy in schools is becoming an increasingly important part of mathematics learning and teaching. This is because educators want students to engage with mathematical concepts more deeply, use mathematics to make sense of their environment and make decisions that are based on the analysis of mathematical information. In order to be numerate,…

This article describes a process one librarian discovered and implemented as she observed the changing role of the librarian and the library. Frustration was growing due to the gradual erosion of school libraries as they struggled to remain, with electronic books, video streaming, and databases supplanting many of the physical resources in the…

The analysis and interpretation of data are important life skills. A poster challenge for schoolchildren provides an innovative outlet for these skills and demonstrates their relevance to daily life. We discuss our Statistics Poster Challenge and the lessons we have learned.

Secretary of Education Duncan (2010) lamented the state of U.S. education in 2010 after the release of the results from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). He wrote: "Unfortunately, the 2009 PISA results show that American students are poorly prepared to compete in today's knowledge economy. President Obama has…

Quantitative reasoning is a key intellectual skill, applicable across disciplines and best taught in the context of authentic, relevant problems. Here, I describe and assess a laboratory exercise that has students calculate their "carbon footprint" and evaluate the impacts of various behavior choices on that footprint. Students gather…

For students to be successful in STEM, they need "statistical literacy," the ability to interpret, evaluate, and communicate statistical information (Gal 2002). The science and engineering practices dimension of the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") highlights these skills, emphasizing the importance of…

Information on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa is often interpreted through a veil of secrecy and shame and, I argue, with flawed understanding of basic statistics. This research determined the levels of statistical literacy evident in 316 future Mathematical Literacy teachers' explanations of the median in the context of HIV/AIDS…