Little empirical evidence suggested that independent reading abilities of students enrolled in biology predicted their performance on the Biology I Graduation End-of-Course Assessment (ECA). An archival study was conducted at one Indiana urban public high school in Indianapolis, Indiana, by examining existing educational assessment data to test…

Background/Context: Community colleges are central to the United States' college completion goals. A popular strategy pushed by a number of influential policy organizations and foundations is a policy of tying state funding to community college completions, otherwise known simply as performance funding. This is happening despite little to no…

Lack of financial resources to pay for postsecondary education--perceived and actual--has been cited as a barrier to student access and persistence, particularly for Latino students. This study investigates the following question: "To what extent does financial aid affect the educational attainment of Latinos enrolled in Associate's degree…

Background: For schools to be safe and supportive for students, school health professionals should be aware of the particular challenges lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ) students face, especially the risk for discrimination, violent victimization, and depression in the school setting. We assessed school health…

In this paper, we describe an in-class experiment that is easy to implement with large groups of students. The experiment takes approximately 15-20 minutes to run and involves each student completing one of four types of Sudoku puzzles and recording the time it takes to completion. The resulting data set can be used as a teaching tool at an…

This study analyzed the plausibility of merging school districts in New York State. The study considered how consolidation impacts finance, instruction, demographics, and enrollment for 56 public schools in Nassau County of the Long Island region of New York State. It also draws comparisons for county-, township-, and regionally-based school…

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began an ambitious reform of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq's (KRI's) kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) education system beginning in 2007 in an effort to modernize the curriculum, upgrade school facilities, and raise the quality of instruction. In 2010, RAND was asked to conduct a one-year study to assess…

This qualitative research study examines the preschool choices made by five mothers of children with disabilities who had interacted with early intervention professionals in the year prior to their children's transition to preschool. The purpose of this study was to examine the understanding parents created of their children's disability through…

The Non-Equivalent groups with Anchor Test (NEAT) design involves "missing data" that are "missing by design." Three nonlinear observed score equating methods used with a NEAT design are the "frequency estimation equipercentile equating" (FEEE), the "chain equipercentile equating" (CEE), and the "item-response-theory observed-score-equating" (IRT…

Online education and computer-assisted instruction (CAI) have existed for years, but few general tools exist to help instructors create and evaluate lessons. Are these tools sufficient? Specifically, what elements do instructors want to see in online testing tools? This study asked instructors from various disciplines to identify and evaluate the…

In this article, the authors present an inquiry-based approach to facilitate student understanding of the differences among common cloud descriptive characteristics through the use of a semi-dichotomous key developed by a former West Virginia state climatologist. The authors also demonstrate how students can analyze common class data sets that…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to discover nurse educators' perceptions about the culture of nursing and how they bring students into that culture. Background: Although the extant literature addresses the process of socialization to the profession, literature exploring socialization as enculturation is scant. Nurse educators'…

Teacher retention in supplemental education, or for-profit, center-based tutoring, is a concern. As yet, no studies in the past 20 years have examined teacher retention in supplemental education. The importance of this research study was to give voice to supplemental educators' experiences in center-based tutoring through narrative inquiry. The…

This engaging text takes an evenhanded approach to major theoretical paradigms in evaluation and builds a bridge from them to evaluation practice. Featuring helpful checklists, procedural steps, provocative questions that invite readers to explore their own theoretical assumptions, and practical exercises, the book provides concrete guidance for…

This is a keynote presentation given at AERA on developing a validity agenda for growth models in a large scale (e.g., state) setting. The emphasis of this presentation was to indicate that growth models and the validity agenda designed to provide evidence in supporting the claims to be made need to be personalized to meet the local or…