This dissertation addresses two research questions: 1. Do states misrepresent their progress on their own state assessments? 2. If states do distort their progress, are their predictors to suggest why this distortion occurs? The first research question requires that distortion be defined. For the purposes of this dissertation I calculated the…

University entrance criteria can be a contentious topic, particularly in respect of equity. In this paper we discuss studies which demonstrate that revisions of entrance criteria which are designed with no explicit reference to equity issues can have a surprisingly positive impact on the fractions of disadvantaged subgroups admitted. We…

Interaction and quadratic effects in latent variable models have to date only rarely been tested in practice. Traditional product indicator approaches need to create product indicators (e.g., x[superscript 2] [subscript 1], x[subscript 1]x[subscript 4]) to serve as indicators of each nonlinear latent construct. These approaches require the use of…

In a provocative and influential paper, Jesse Rothstein (2010) finds that standard value added models (VAMs) suggest implausible future teacher effects on past student achievement, a finding that obviously cannot be viewed as causal. This is the basis of a falsification test (the Rothstein falsification test) that appears to indicate bias in VAM…

The type I error rate in stepwise regression analysis deserves serious consideration by researchers. The problem-wide error rate is the probability of selecting any variable when all variables have population regression weights of zero. Appropriate significance tests are presented and a Monte Carlo experiment is described. (Author/CTM)

The capability was studied of each of three models for producing indices that will reproduce school effectiveness rankings established a priori through simulation. The models used were a within-group regression technique, a regression model using individual scores, and a regression model using means. Data for 54 hypothetical schools on input, SES,…