Assessment is fundamental to school psychology, but its purpose has shifted from making predictions about children to improving outcomes for children. This commentary on the special issue focuses on screening and progress-monitoring decisions that can be used to solve student problems. We outline several psychometric and practical issues that…

Understanding large-scale patterns in student course enrollment is a problem of great interest to university administrators and educational researchers. Yet important decisions are often made without a good quantitative framework of the process underlying student choices. We propose a probabilistic approach to modelling course enrollment…

Increasing enrollment in undergraduate and graduate economics courses that focus on the natural world (natural resource, environmental, energy, and mineral economics) is important for preparing a work force capable of addressing complex environmental issues. This is especially challenging for smaller universities that want to offer diverse…

We used housing data from a Chinese college to examine peer effects on students' major persistence and major choices after dropping out of their initial majors. Random checks were performed to ensure that student peers--dormitory roommates and social group mates--were randomly assigned according to a few known factors. In addition, two peer groups…

Public pension systems in many U.S. states face large funding short-falls, and policymakers have considered moving toward defined contribution (DC) pension structures in the interest of reducing the likelihood of future shortfalls. Concerns exist, however, that such changes might increase levels of employee turnover. The empirical evidence on the…

The concept of "weak measurements" in quantum physics is a way of "cheating" the Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg stated (and 85 years of experiments have demonstrated) that it is impossible to know both the position and momentum of a particle with arbitrary precision. More precise measurements of one decrease the precision…

Learning to choose adaptively when faced with uncertain and variable outcomes is a central challenge for decision makers. This study examines repeated choice in dynamic probability learning tasks in which outcome probabilities changed either as a function of the choices participants made or independently of those choices. This presence/absence of…

While school choice has been well studied, there is little existing research exploring the role of transportation, in general, and school buses, in particular, to school choice decisions. We examine the effect of school buses on school choice decisions using data on kindergarten students and their eligibility for transportation assistance in New…

Single-period inventory models with uncertain demand are very well known in the business analytics community. Typically, such models are rule-based functions, or sets of functions, of one decision variable (order quantity) and one random variable (demand). In academics, the models are taught selectively and usually not completely. Students are…

We estimate the percentage of eligible students who do not take up their federal need-based student financial aid entitlements in a microsimulation model for the German Socio-Economic Panel Study 2002--2013. We find that about 40% of the eligible low-income students do not take up their entitlements. Non-take-up is inversely and rather…

A gap exists in the information needed to make intervention decisions with preschool children who are unresponsive to instructional intervention. "Multi-Tiered System of Supports/Response to Intervention" (MTSS/RTI) progress monitoring is helpful in indicating when an intervention change is needed but provides little information on what…

To assist new scientists in the transition to independent research careers, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented an Early Stage Investigator (ESI) policy beginning with applications submitted in 2009. During the review process, the ESI designation segregates applications submitted by investigators who are within 10 years of…

Two experiments tested how the "functional form" of the causal relations that link features of categories affects category-based inferences. Whereas "independent causes" can each bring about an effect by themselves, "conjunctive causes" all need to be present for an effect to occur. The causal model view of category…

What are the cognitive mechanisms underlying subjective valuations formed on the basis of sequential experiences of an option's possible outcomes? Ashby and Rakow (2014) have proposed a sliding window model (SWIM), according to which people's valuations represent the average of a limited sample of recent experiences (the size of which is estimated…

We address the problem of selecting the best of a set of units based on a criterion variable, when its value is recorded for every unit subject to estimation, measurement, or another source of error. The solution is constructed in a decision-theoretical framework, incorporating the consequences (ramifications) of the various kinds of error that…