Longitudinal studies can produce biased estimates of learning if children miss tests. In an application to summer learning, we illustrate how missing test scores can create an illusion of large summer learning gaps when true gaps are close to zero. We demonstrate two methods that reduce bias by exploiting the correlations between missing and…

Evaluators of education interventions are increasingly designing studies to detect impacts much smaller than the 0.20 standard deviations that Cohen (1988) characterized as "small." While the need to detect smaller impacts is based on compelling arguments that such impacts are substantively meaningful, the drive to detect smaller impacts…

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…

This report examines traditional teacher preparation in classroom management, which is a struggle for many teachers, especially new ones. 122 teacher preparation programs--both elementary and secondary, graduate and undergraduate--were examined to review the full breadth of the professional sequence. The following conclusions are made as a result…

This publication is dedicated to Chris Selby Smith, who was posthumously awarded the 2009 National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) VET Researcher of the Year Award. Selby Smith's body of work displayed many aspects of the excellence for which the award is offered. His experience working in both academia and the public service gave…

This technical paper examines the issue of attrition bias in two cohorts of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), based on an analysis using data from 1995 to 2002. Data up to 2002 provided eight years of information on members of the Y95 cohort and five years of information on members of the Y98 cohort. This study suggests that…

The present review examines research on the effects of technology use on reading achievement in K-12 classrooms. Unlike previous reviews, this review applies consistent inclusion standards to focus on studies that met high methodological standards. In addition, methodological and substantive features of the studies are investigated to examine the…

A well-known "study" comparing the top school problems of 1940 (talking and gum chewing) with those of 1987 (drug abuse, pregnancy, and violence) is nonexistent. In 1940, 49 percent of all youth did not finish high school, 37,000 teenagers died from violence or disease, and 335,000 teens gave birth. Educators should discount pastoral…

In educational effectiveness research, multilevel models are increasingly used because these models take the multilevel structure of the data into account. In this paper, the effect of ignoring one or more levels of variation in hierarchical linear regression is explored, using a model with four hierarchical levels (individual pupil, class group,…

As an extension of B. Thompson's 1998 invited address to the American Educational Research Association, this paper cites two additional common faux pas in research methodology and explores some research issues for the future. These two errors in methodology are the use of univariate analyses in the presence of multiple outcome variables (with the…

Compared to most countries assessed in 1994, the United States had a greater concentration of adults who scored at the lowest literacy levels across prose, document, and quantitative literacy domains. However, it had one of the higher concentrations of adults who scored at or above level 4 on the prose scale. The proportion of adults who scored at…

A policy-focus Delphi study was conducted to identify the barriers which prohibit handicapped students from entering or completing vocational technical programs in community colleges in Texas and to identify recommendations and tasks relating to the removal of these barriers. A seventy-two member participant group, which included a nineteen member…

Design and results of an investigation attempting to analyze and improve children's solution processes in elementary addition and subtraction problems are described. As background for the study, a conceptual model was developed based on previous research. One dimension of the model relates to the characteristics of the tasks (numerical versus word…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of alcohol use on student behaviors in Ontario schools. The study was designed to investigate the prevalence of alcohol use by students in grades 7-13 and the effects of drinking on classroom and school behaviors by interviewing both students and teachers. The teachers were surveyed to…

In the face of an unprecedented increase in school crime and violence, this book addresses school crime as a two-dimensional issue consisting of the problem of crime in schools and the role of schools in preventing delinquency and dealing with delinquent students. This book reviews the theories that attempt to explain the relationships among…