The Reduced Reparameterized Unified Model (Reduced RUM) is a diagnostic classification model for educational assessment that has received considerable attention among psychometricians. However, the computational options for researchers and practitioners who wish to use the Reduced RUM in their work, but do not feel comfortable writing their own…

This "Practitioner's Guide to Growth Models," commissioned by the Technical Issues in Large-Scale Assessment (TILSA) and Accountability Systems & Reporting (ASR), collaboratives of the "Council of Chief State School Officers," describes different ways to calculate student academic growth and to make judgments about the…

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) requires that Title IV degree-granting institutions disclose annually the graduation rates of first-time, full-time degree- or certificate-seeking undergraduate students, disaggregated by gender, each major racial/ethnic subgroup, and receipt or non-receipt of a federal Pell grant or subsidized…

This Forum guide offers best practice suggestions on collecting and using student attendance data to improve performance. It includes a standard set of codes to make attendance data comparable across districts and states. There are real-life examples of how attendance information has been used by school districts. Chapter 1 discusses the…

With its critical assessments of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of education programs, policies, and practices (referred to as "interventions"), and a range of products summarizing this evidence, the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) is an important part of the Institute of Education Sciences' strategy to use rigorous and relevant…

Studies evaluating hypotheses about sources of differential item functioning (DIF) are classified into two categories: observational studies evaluating operational items and randomized DIF studies evaluating specially constructed items. For observational studies, advice is given for item classification, sample selection, the matching criterion,…

Designed to introduce the student to some of the major bibliographic tools of political science found in the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono, this guide provides a systematic approach to information sources in the manner of a pathfinder. Beginning with a list of articles that are useful for defining scope, the guide…

The National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) is a cooperative of state, local, and federal education agencies. The goal of Forum activities is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and programmatic decision-makers. One approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the collective experiences of Forum…