People dislike the Common Core for several different reasons, and so it is important to disaggregate the sources of opposition and to assess and then to dispel some of the myths that have built up around it. It also is important to understand the unusual political alliances that have emerged in opposition to Common Core implementation and how they…

This book diagnoses Cambodian teaching quality and presents policy options for reform. Through classroom observation, assessments of mathematics and pedagogical content knowledge, and surveys of teachers and school directors, it sheds light on content and instruction, interactions with school directors, instructional support systems, and the…

Catch Up® Literacy is a structured one-to-one literacy intervention for pupils between the ages of 6 and 14 who are struggling to learn to read. It teaches pupils to blend phonemes (combine letter sounds into words), segment phonemes (separate words into letter sounds), and memorise particular words so they can be understood without needing to use…

Graduates of associate degree (AD) nursing programs form the largest segment of first-time National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN®) test takers, yet also experience the highest rate of NCLEX-RN® failures. NCLEX-RN® failure delays entry into the profession, adding an emotional and financial toll to the unsuccessful…

Item pool quality has been regarded as one important factor to help realize enhanced measurement quality for the computerized adaptive test (CAT) (e.g., Flaugher, 2000; Jensema, 1977; McBride & Wise, 1976; Reckase, 1976; 2003; van der Linden, Ariel, & Veldkamp, 2006; Veldkamp & van der Linden, 2000; Xing & Hambleton, 2004). However, studies are…

This study examined the "Tejas LEE or El Inventario de Lectura en Espanol de Tejas" (Grade 1) to determine if a relationship existed between reading comprehension in Spanish and the tested skills on the diagnostic assessment. This quantitative research design evaluated the psychometric characteristics of the Tejas LEE and followed customary…

As the emphasis on accountability in education increases, so does the prevalence of low-stakes testing. It is essential to understand test-taking motivation in low-stakes contexts, as low motivation has implications for the validity of inferences made from test scores about examinee knowledge and ability. The current study expanded upon previous…

Psychoeducational tests often are used to analyze the mental processes that affect academic potential and explore the possibility of a co-occurring disability. These evaluations may provide misleading results for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. Deriving accurate, useful results from academic and psychoeducational testing may require…

The Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED) is a multirater assessment of principals' learning-centered leadership. The instrument was developed based on the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. In this article, we report on the validity and reliability evidence for the VAL-ED accumulated in a national field…

Several researchers (e.g., Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, & Stecher, 2000; Koretz & Barron, 1998; Linn, 2000) have asserted that test-based accountability, a crucial component of U.S. education policy, has resulted in score inflation. This inference has relied on comparisons with performance on other tests such as the National Assessment of…

The use of large-scale assessments for making high stakes inferences about students and the schools in which they are situated is premised on the assumption that tests are sensitive to good instruction. An increase in the quality of classroom instruction should cause, on the average, an increase in test scores. In work with a number of colleagues…

Comments on Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations by Confer et al. We applaud Confer et al.'s (February-March 2010) clarifications of the many misconceptions surrounding the use of evolutionary analyses in psychology. As they noted, such misunderstandings are common and result in a curious tendency of some…

This study explored the extent to which sequential auditory grouping affects the perception of temporal synchrony. In Experiment 1, listeners discriminated between 2 pairs of asynchronous "target" tones at different frequencies, A and B, in which the B tone either led or lagged. Thresholds were markedly higher when the target tones were temporally…

We test whether comparison can promote learning of new relational abstractions. In Experiment 1, preschoolers heard labels for novel spatial patterns and were asked to extend the label to one of two alternatives: one sharing an object with the standard or one having the same relational pattern as the standard. Children strongly preferred the…

This paper uses the fictional case of the "Babel fish" to explore and illustrate the issues involved in the controversy about the use of cochlear implants in prelinguistically deaf children. Analysis of this controversy suggests that the development of genetic tests for deafness poses a serious threat to the continued flourishing of Deaf…