Motivation impacts student academic performance. A performance task to directly assess writing motivation in young children is needed. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the validity of the Writing Challenge Task (WCT), a task-oriented assessment created to measure writing motivation with 106 kindergarten students in the rural…

The PageRank model has been applied in sport ranking systems; however, prior implementations exhibited limitations and failed to produce valid rankings. This study analyzed 1,466 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 football games and developed a novel, modified PageRank model. We also proposed an artificial…

This paper reports an investigation into the psychometric properties of the COR-Advantage1.5 (COR-Adv1.5) assessment tool, a criterion-referenced observation-based instrument designed to assess the developmental abilities of children from birth through kindergarten. Using data from 8534 children participating in a state-funded preschool program…

Professional learning (PL) is recognized widely in the field of education as a critical implementation strategy to support teacher knowledge and skill development. Rivet Education created a Professional Learning Partner Guide (PLPG), a searchable database of learning providers with expertise in the adoption and implementation of High Quality…

The primary purpose of this study was to systematically review the literature regarding the characteristics, use, and implementation of an emerging assessment methodology, "SRL microanalysis." Forty-two studies across diverse samples, contexts, and research methodologies met inclusion criteria. The majority of studies used microanalysis…

Although self-regulated learning (SRL) is seen as highly relevant for successful college learning, college students oftentimes show a lack in SRL abilities. Therefore, it seems necessary to foster SRL in this group of leaners. In order to evaluate such training and to foster SRL in an optimal way, a valid assessment of this competence and its…

Recent research on entering college student assessment instruments and placement practices has been critical. Critics suggest that commonly used assessment instruments are inaccurate, misused, and lack predictive validity. This article describes valid criticisms and appropriate uses of assessment instruments. It also lists challenges and provides…

Purpose: Analysis of narrative language samples is a recommended clinical practice in the assessment of children's language skills, but we know little about how results from such analyses relate to overall oral language ability across the early school years. We examined the relations between language sample metrics from a short narrative retell,…

The Scylla and Charybdis in this discussion of teacher evaluation are standardized achievement test data on the one hand, and classroom observational systems on the other. These are the two most common methods used to judge teachers' competency. Both have serious flaws: the former primarily with validity, the latter primarily with reliability. At…

The study by Sanchez (2024a & 2024b) reveals evidence of grade inflation in high school GPA (HSGPA) from 2018 to 2022 despite stable or slightly decreased ACT scores. This study demonstrated that the predicted cumulative first-year hours earned at 2- and 4-year colleges decreased when the predictions were based on HSGPA alone, but predicted…

In Gargani and Strong (2014), we describe The Rapid Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness (RATE), a new teacher evaluation instrument. Our account of the validation research associated with RATE inspired a review by Good and Lavigne (2015). Here, we reply to the main points of their review. We elaborate on the validity, reliability, theoretical…

Dynamic assessment methods, initially developed by Feuerstein in the 1970s, have been recommended as being more equitable for identifying the academic abilities of students who may not perform well on traditional assessments due to these learners' cultural, linguistic, or economic differences from the population for whom the traditional measures…

In recent years, readability formulas have gained new prominence as a basis for selecting texts for learning and assessment. Variables that quantitative tools count (e.g., word frequency, sentence length) provide valid measures of text complexity insofar as they accurately predict representative and high-quality criteria. The longstanding…

This work asks one simple question: "how reliable is the method used by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to estimate projected rates of VET program completion?" In other words, how well do early projections align with actual completion rates some years later? Completion rates are simple to calculate with a…

We evaluate the predictive validity of the Massachusetts Candidate Assessment of Performance (CAP), a practice-based assessment of teaching skills that is typically taken during a candidate's student teaching placement and is a requirement for teacher preparation program completion in Massachusetts. We find that candidates' performance on the CAP…