Background/Context: In recent years, state legislatures, state education departments, and advocacy groups in over 30 states have sponsored education adequacy studies, which aim to determine objectively the amount of funding needed to provide all students a meaningful opportunity for an adequate education. Not surprisingly, because of their growing…

Web-based courses are promising in that they are effective and have the possibility of their instructional design being improved over time. However, the assessments of said courses are criticized in terms of their validity. This paper is an exploratory case study regarding the validity of the assessment system used in a semi presential web-based…

This study examined the factor structure of the parent and teacher versions of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; R. Goodman, 1997) with a sample of first-grade children at risk for educational failure. The 5-factor model previously found in studies using exploratory factor analysis was fit to the data for both parent and teacher…

The study under review is the second-year evaluation report of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), a publicly funded voucher program that allows low-income students in Milwaukee to attend secular and religious private schools in that city. Its primary finding is that there were no overall statistically significant differences in…

A study was undertaken at Morton College, in Illinois, to examine the relationship of entering grade point average (GPA) and grades in prerequisite support courses in algebra, biology, and chemistry to graduation in the college's nursing program. A sample was developed of 255 students admitted to the nursing program in 1990, 1991, and 1992 and…

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) program is exploring a change in Section 3 of the TOEFL test that would replace the vocabulary subpart with additional reading comprehension questions. This study investigated the proposed revision in terms of the length and timing that would be necessary to address concerns of test speededness of…

This report describes how an advisory committee of health occupations education instructors from Missouri schools where tests were given statistically analyzed test items for health services assistant for reliability and validity and then revised the test items. Seventy-five sets of test item booklets were printed. Four test booklets and a…

This study was a continuation of an in-process research effort to further refine the Inventory of Classroom Management Styles (ICMS), an instrument designed to measure teachers' perceptions of their classroom management beliefs and practices. Using preliminary data analysis based on partial data collection, the primary objective of this study was…

This paper describes the development and validation of measures of students' and teachers' perceptions of the extent to which their school is a community. Community, in this instance, focuses on the quality of social relationships in the school. The development of measures of school community is reported, and the construct validity of these…

As individual states and communities work out curriculum and instructional expectations, high quality assessments of communication skills will continue to evolve. An active cycle of setting goals, developing instruction, teaching, testing, and assessing student and system success is the key to the process of renewal and improvement. All types of…

Expectancy-valence models are used most in the field of motivational psychology. However, teachers' motivation had not been studied by these models and only limited research exists assessing the expectancy and the valence constructs. This study's aim was to examine preservice teachers' and practicing teachers' motivation by the expectancy-valence…

This study presents psychometric characteristics of the mathematics problem solving performance assessment used in the Minneapolis Public Schools, focusing on the interrater reliability, scoring reliability, and validity of the assessment. The Minneapolis Math Problem Solving Assessment (MPSA) was established in 1991. Students are asked to solve…

A two-dimensional, four-category model for classifying the way that people relate to others, or relationship style, was developed by T. Alessandra (1987). The model characterizes style in terms of openness, with poles of open and self-contained, and directness, with poles of direct and indirect. Combining the poles of the two dimensions yields the…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were differences between learning disabled and nonlearning disabled students in skill areas and total scores on the Brigance K & 1 Screen for Kindergarten and First Grade. The study investigated whether students with learning disabilities would show significant weaknesses in language-based…

A form for assessing the multicultural content of instructional materials at the elementary and secondary school levels is presented. It consists of 41 statements about the content extent, content validity, and cognitive content of classroom materials, each to be rated on a scale of 0 to 5. The statements address the degree to which the materials…