Educational reform is most likely to be successful when teachers are knowledgeable about the intended reform, and when their concerns about the reform are understood and addressed. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is an effort to establish a set of nationwide expectations for students and teachers. This study examined teacher understanding…

The aim of this paper is to present a shortened version of the SIS (support intensity scale) obtained by the application of mathematical models and instruments, adopting special algorithms based on the most recent developments in artificial adaptive systems. All the variables of SIS applied to 1,052 subjects with ID (intellectual disabilities)…

Two iterative procedures for constructing Rasch scales are presented. A log-likelihood ratio test based on a quasi-loglinear formulation of the Rasch model is given by which one item at a time can be deleted from or added to an initial item set. In the so-called "top-down" algorithm, items are stepwise deleted from a relatively large…

This paper considers, from a theoretical point of view, two measurement approaches used in measuring success and failure in skills tests in physical education. The first, "fixed length" (FL) testing, entails counting the number of successful performances in a fixed number of trials. The second, "trials-to-criterion" (TTC)…

The value-added model is presented as a method of assessing the impact of treatments in pretest-posttest quasi-experimental designs. The model yields a projection of treatment group performance at posttest time with no special treatment. The difference between the expected result and the actual outcome is "the value added," a measure of…