Equating is an essential tool in educational assessment due the critical role it plays in several key areas: establishing validity across forms and years; fairness; test security; and, increasingly, continuity in programs that release items or require ongoing development. Although the practice of equating is rooted in long standing practices that…

The quest for making social work a discipline based entirely on empirical research findings is not new. In this article, the authors briefly review the field of social work in the United States during the past 100 years and discuss how the quest for the status of a profession forced the emphasis on empirical research. However, the authors claim…

Discussions of the barriers to completion in community colleges have largely focused on student success in introductory college-level math and English courses, and rightfully so, since these courses are typically required for degrees. However, there is a much broader range of courses that also serve as "gatekeepers" in the sense that they are…

There is a growing consensus that teacher evaluation in the United States is fundamentally broken. Few would argue that a system that tells 98 percent of teachers they are "satisfactory" benefits anyone--including teachers. The nation's collective failure to invest in high-quality professional feedback to teachers is inconsistent with…

Research has long been clear that teachers matter more to student learning than any other in-school factor. Improving the quality of teaching is critical to student success. Yet only recently have many states and districts begun to take seriously the importance of evaluating teacher performance and providing teachers with the feedback they need to…

No one has a bigger stake in teaching effectiveness than students. Nor are there any better experts on how teaching is experienced by its intended beneficiaries. Only recently have many policymakers and practitioners come to recognize that--when asked the right questions, in the right ways--students can be an important source of information on the…

As evidence-based practice is increasingly accepted in social work, the challenges associated with its actual implementation become more apparent and pressing. This article identifies implementation as a critical issue for research; implementation itself must be better understood if evidence-based practices are to be used and resultant…

Although e-learning has been prompted to various education levels, the intention to continue using such systems is still very low, and the acceptance-discontinuance anomaly phenomenon (i.e., users discontinue using e-learning after initially accepting it) is a common occurrence. This paper synthesizes the expectation-confirmation model (ECM), the…

With many children and adults affected by Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, researchers strive to understand the underpinnings of ADHD and associated factors on both a basic and applied level. The goal of this volume is to explore some of the broad array of research in the field of ADHD. The 12 chapters cover a variety of topics as varied…

Background: The purpose of this study was to revise and validate the "Individual Child Engagement Record" (ICER), an instrument designed to observe and measure the engagement of children with disabilities in early childhood settings. Method: The ICER was revised with reference to pilot study results and the literature. Inter-observer…

Background: This study seeks to examine a multidimensional model of student motivation and engagement using within- and between-network construct validation approaches. Aims: The study tests the first- and higher-order factor structure of the motivation and engagement wheel and its corresponding measurement tool, the Motivation and Engagement…

This study examined the criterion validity of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) reading measures in three ways: the relationship between CBM performance and teacher perceptions of student academic functioning; relationship between CBM scores and reading performance on a group achievement test; and the ability of CBM to differentiate between…

Validity studies of measures for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) for use with preschool children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lacking. The Child Behavior Checklist 1.5-5 (CBCL; Achenbach and Rescorla, Manual for the ASEBA Preschool Forms & Profiles. VT: University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth, and…

This study evaluated the Clarke modification of the Questionnaire on Resources and Stress with parents (n=367) of autistic, mentally retarded, learning-disabled, and asymptomatic children. Good internal consistency, split-half reliability, and coefficient of stability were obtained as well as acceptable construct and concurrent validities.…

This study established criterion-related validity for the Reading Passages Subtest of a locally developed curriculum-based measurement (CBM) instrument, with cross-validation across reading curricula and criterion measures. Correlations of 479 primary grade students' reading scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills provided support for CBM…