This study analyzed Pennsylvania School Climate Survey data from students and staff in the 2021/22 school year to assess the validity and reliability of the elementary school student version of the survey; approaches to scoring the survey in individual schools at all grade levels; and perceptions of school climate across student, staff, and school…

Background: This study investigated the scoring and criterion-related validity of the TEAP, a newly developed Test of English for Academic Purposes. In this study, scoring validity was examined by investigating the factor structure, while criterion-related validity was examined by first investigating the longitudinal change of test takers'…

These are the appendixes for the report, "Strengthening the Pennsylvania School Climate Survey to Inform School Decisionmaking." This study analyzed Pennsylvania School Climate Survey data from students and staff in the 2021/22 school year to assess the validity and reliability of the elementary school student version of the survey;…

Rationale is presented for the derivation of a new measure of stressful life events for use with students [the Negative Life Events Scale for Students (NLESS)]. Ten stressful life events questionnaires were reviewed, and the more than 600 items mentioned in these scales were culled based on the following criteria: (a) only long-term and unpleasant…

In this report we provide preliminary evidence on the measurement characteristics for a new type of teaching performance assessment designed to be combined with complementary assessments of teacher content knowledge. The resulting test, which we refer to as the Foundational Assessment of Competencies for Teaching (FACT), is designed for use as…

This article documents the adaptation, piloting and validation of a measure of teachers' ethical sensitivity. To create the test, we modified a measure from dentistry drawing on literature in teacher professional ethics and drew on the expertise of professional ethics scholars and practitioners. Based on the results of Rasch analysis combined with…

The Academic Competence Evaluation Scales (ACES; DiPerna and Elliott in School Psychol Rev 31(3):293, 2002) is a 73-item teacher rating scale that assesses academic skills and enablers. The ACES Short Form (ASF) is a newly extracted 32-item short form of the ACES that has promising psychometric properties (Anthony and DiPerna in School Psychol Q…

A common challenge in the evaluation of K-12 science education is identifying valid scales that are an appropriate fit for both a student's age and the educational outcomes of interest. Though many new scales have been validated in recent years, there is much to learn about the appropriate educational contexts and audiences for these measures.…

The current study, with 409 fourth graders in two-way immersion programs, explored the writing self-perceptions of native English and native Spanish speakers and the relationship between self-perceptions and writing performance. An adapted version of the Writer Self-Perception Scale (WSPS) was administered along with a writing task. Native English…

The measurement of higher-order competencies within a tertiary education system across countries presents methodological challenges due to differences in educational systems, socio-economic factors, and perceptions as to which constructs should be assessed (Blömeke, Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, Kuhn, & Fege, 2013). According to Hart Research…

This is a psychometric analysis of an instrument to assess the socio-emotional development of school students, How I Feel (HIF), developed as a situational judgment test, with scoring based on expert judgments. The HIF test was administered in grades 4-9, 1999-2005. Internal consistency, retest reliability, and year-to-year stability were…

This article develops a validity argument approach for use on observation protocols currently used to assess teacher quality for high-stakes personnel and professional development decisions. After defining the teaching quality domain, we articulate an interpretive argument for observation protocols. To illustrate the types of evidence that might…

There is a growing consensus that teacher evaluation in the United States is fundamentally broken. Few would argue that a system that tells 98 percent of teachers they are "satisfactory" benefits anyone--including teachers. The nation's collective failure to invest in high-quality professional feedback to teachers is inconsistent with…

Research has long been clear that teachers matter more to student learning than any other in-school factor. Improving the quality of teaching is critical to student success. Yet only recently have many states and districts begun to take seriously the importance of evaluating teacher performance and providing teachers with the feedback they need to…

Although the Word Associates Format (WAF) is becoming more frequently used as a depth-of-knowledge measure, relatively little validation has been carried out on it. This report of two validation studies tackles various important WAF issues yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Study 1 conducted introspective interviews regarding students' WAF…