Recent developments in cognitive and educational psychology, such as increased appreciation of the situated nature of learning and understanding, call for broader ranges of student models and types of data than those standard in testing today. We must specify how what we observe on the test is related to competence as we conceptualize it, and…

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of MC2G program to teach certain topics in statistics education. MC2G is a program written in Pascal Delphi by Gordon Brooks of Ohio University based on Monte Carlo studies. MC2G provides students opportunity to practice important topics in an introductory statistics course, such as power, Type I…

The research project investigated participation and achievement in apprenticeships by young people from minority ethnic groups across a number of regions and occupational sectors. It sought views on the value and status of apprenticeship, and factors influencing take-up, retention and achievement, and how this may be improved. The project…

Summative evaluations have often been undertaken to determine the impact of educational programs on student academic achievement employing a quasi-experimental design. The summative finding is expected to be less misleading if a statistical model is performed on a dataset including a sound matched sample as a control group. This is because an…

This study investigated the attitudes toward statistics of graduate students who used a computer program as part of the instruction, which allowed for an individualized, self-paced, student-centered, activity-based course. The twelve sections involved in this study were offered in the spring and fall 2001, spring and fall 2002, spring and fall…

The proportion of variance in student achievement that is explained by student SES-"poverty's power rating," as some dub it--tends to be lower among smaller schools than among larger schools. Small schools, many claim, are able to somehow disrupt the seemingly axiomatic association between SES and student achievement. Using eighth-grade…

The National Indian Education Study is a two-part study designed to describe the condition of education for American Indian/Alaska Native students in the United States. The study was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics for the U.S. Department of Education, with the support of the Office of Indian Education. This report, Part…

This abstract uses graphs and text to summarize recent statistics on the education of children with disabilities based on data from the U.S. Department of Education. It reports that 12.2 percent of students enrolled in American schools in 1993-94 were officially designated as having disabilities. More than two-thirds of students have mental or…

The 14 papers presented in this proceedings include: (1) "Intersurvey Consistency in School Surveys" (Wray Smith, Al Holt, Steven Kaufman, and Fritz Scheuren); (2) "Estimation Issues Related to the Student Component of the SASS" (Karen Ellen King and Steven Kaufman); (3) "Properties of the Schools and Staffing Survey's…

This study examined salary discrimination by race and sex for faculty of higher education institutions. Data were obtained from the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF-93), a cross-sectional survey of 817 public and private higher education institutions and 25,780 faculty. The findings indicated that while the salary gap between…

The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) is an integrated system of surveys of public and private schools, school districts, school administrators, and teachers conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). This collection contains papers related to the SASS presented at meetings of the American Statistical Association in August…

The comparison of item response theory models for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was extended to an equating context as simulation trials were used to "equate the test to itself." Equating sample data were generated from administration of identical item sets. Equatings that used procedures based on each model (simple…

This publication provides a comprehensive overview of work done across all parts of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Each issue contains short publications, summaries, and descriptions that cover all NCES publications and data products released during a 3-month period. Each issue also contains a message from the NCES on a…

In an effort to highlight the importance of identifying children who have been lead poisoned, the Illinois Department of Public Health produces its surveillance report to alert the community to the geographical risk of lead poisoning and to report on screening results. The hope is that increased public awareness will result in less harm to…

A study was designed to help teachers discover which tools best predict future success in reading proficiency. It sought to find out whether commonly used reading assessments and/or measures of oral reading fluency could predict reading proficiency as measured by a standardized criterion-referenced achievement test of reading. In the first…