Examines how the demographic values of foreign travel, previous foreign-language learning, major field of study, and other factors affect students' beliefs about the study of German. The article focuses on student-perceived improvement in the four skills and cultural knowledge, student motivation, and the expected contributions of teachers and…

The difference in gain scores produced by traditional pretests and those produced by retrospective pretests when compared to posttest scores on the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument for preservice teachers was investigated in this study. Results indicated that gain scores using the traditional pretest produced significant improvement in…

The Nisonger Child Behavior Rating Form (NCBRF) is a behavior rating scale designed for children and adolescents with mental retardation. The purpose of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of the NCBRF in a sample of 330 children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Parent and teacher ratings were independently…

An open social systems model is used to frame and test a series of hypotheses. The socioeconomic status of the environment and four internal system elements (structure, individual, culture, politics) of the school are used to explain two sets of school outcomes: student achievement and teachers' assessments of overall school effectiveness. A…

This report looks at the affordability of public 4-year post-secondary education in 50 US States and 10 Canadian provinces. Public 4-year post-secondary education was found to be more affordable in the United States on five of the six affordability measures in the report; on the sixth, the two countries were tied. In general, in the United States…

Purpose: Currently under the No Child Left Behind Act, cut scores of successive cohorts of students are used to identify schools that are successful and others that are failing. For many schools, however, this score does not provide an accurate, fair, or comprehensive performance assessment. The focus of this study is to compare three alternative…

This study examined the equivalence of the Child Behavior Checklist/1 1/2-5 (CBCL/1 1/2-5) in 682 parents of 2- to 4-year-old children stratified by parent race/ethnicity (African American, Latino, and non-Latino White), family income (low vs. middle-upper), and language version (Spanish vs. English). Externalizing Scale means differed by income…

This study tests several explanations for discrepant results in an earlier study (Cook et al., 1985) which presented a partial pre-calibration method for equating new editions of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to the same scale as older editions. In contrast to full pre-calibration, which seeks to equate all items from two or more editions,…

The Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CCFIT) was administered to a large sample of American, Nigerian, and Indian adolescents, and item data were examined for cultural bias. The CCFIT was designed to measure fluid intelligence, which is not influenced by cultural differences. Four different item analysis techniques were used to determine…

A procedure for the detection of differential item performance (DIP) is used to investigate the relationships between characteristics of mathematics achievement items and gender differences in performance. Eight randomly equivalent samples of high school seniors were each given a unique form of the ACT Assessment Mathematics Usage Test (ACTM).…

In the fall of 1986, a pilot study was conducted to investigate the differential performance at the item level of Mexican-American students who spoke English as a second language (ESL) versus White native English speakers. This study was designed to replicate the pilot study and test the hypotheses based on that study. The test materials used were…

This manual is designed to accompany Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment (EQA) intermediate school reports to assist in their interpretation and understanding. The normative sample is described as stratified on two dimensions: district enrollment and wealth. Administration procedures are summarized. The cognitive and non-cognitive areas…

A total of 326 public school teachers of kindergarten through grade 12 responded to a survey about teacher-made tests, testing practices, and the availability of testing resources and guidelines. Testing practices and preferences were found to vary significantly by grade level, subject area, and length of teaching experience. School testing…

The Objective Test Scoring and Performance Rating (OTS-PR) system is a fully integrated set of 70 modular FORTRAN programs run on a VAX-8530 computer. Even with no knowledge of computers, the user can implement OTS-PR to score multiple-choice tests, include scores from external sources such as hand-scored essays or scores from nationally…

Purposes of this study were: (1) to examine patterns of implementation of an innovative educational program with a built-in staff development component over a period of three years; (2) to compare patterns of implementation of the Adaptive Learning Environments Model's (ALEM) three types of teaching skills, including generic, adaptive, and program…