A study developed a valid and reliable instrument to measure learner empowerment and tested a model in which learner empowerment was caused by teacher communication behaviors and students' self-esteem. The model tested hypothesized teacher communication behaviors (relevance, verbal immediacy, and nonverbal immediacy) and student self-esteem as…

Many states have a disconnected body of laws regarding educator evaluation. Uncoordinated legislation can create problems with respect to evaluation, appropriate standards and methods to be employed, and implementation strategies. This paper describes Utah's educator-evaluation legislation to illustrate this phenomenon. Four statutory provisions…

This booklet examines fundamental technical and implementation issues involved with large-scale, on-demand performance assessments and teacher-constructed, classroom-based performance assessments, especially for use with students who have disabilities. It discusses definitions and core concepts, outlines theoretical matters, reviews research on…

Research has shown that, when administered properly, kindergarten readiness screening results are associated closely with future school success. The Dallas Preschool Screening Test (DPST) is one of many such instruments used to determine school readiness and predict school success. A study sought to determine the effectiveness of the DPST in…

Developments in the measurement and theory of creativity are reviewed, and the present status of creativity vis-a-vis psychometrics and theory is explored. The realm of creativity has been a quagmire of definition problems, with creativity variously defined in terms of process or stages. In past eras, creativity was essentially measured by output…

This paper addresses issues in the use of facilitated communication with persons having severe communication impairments, including autism. The research on facilitation is summarized, indicating that the vast majority of studies have found no evidence of communication but have found evidence of facilitator influence on the communicator's response.…

Matriculation regulations in California require that community colleges which adopt standardized placement tests demonstrate that the tests are valid predictors of future course success. A positive correlation of at least .35 between test score and subsequent student performance in a particular course is needed to demonstrate the predictive…

A study demonstrated the utility of item analyses to investigate which items function well or poorly in a second language reading recall protocol instrument. Data were drawn from a larger study of 56 learners of German as a second language at various proficiency levels. Pausal units of scored recall protocols were analyzed using both classical…

To assess the written and verbal communication skills of the approximately 100 deaf and hard-of-hearing students attending the College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a real challenge. The only way for most of these students to satisfy the College of Business' general writing competency requirement was to take the…

The purpose of this study was to compare two non-parametric procedures, the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) procedure and the simultaneous item bias (SIB) procedure, with respect to their Type I error rates and power, and to investigate the conditions under which asymptotic distributional properties of the SIB and MH were obtained. Data were simulated to…

Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) scores and final course grades from over 8,000 high school students at 50 schools were gathered to determine the validity of ASVAB Form 14 for the prediction of high school course grades. Grades were collected for courses taken during the academic year in which students were tested on the ASVAB…

One of the most pernicious effects of stress is its effect on the ability of children and youths to function in the classroom. This study examined the factor structure of the Coping Resources Inventory for Educational Enhancement (CRISEE), an instrument designed to measure the coping resources and stressor load of children and youth. Participants…

Factor analysis of the instrument used to evaluate student perceptions of an educational interactive video program has determined that seven constructs were being measured. All of these constructs, however, were not consistently measuring the same things. In fact, the variables on which the factors loaded changed for three of the factors from…

Due to concern for test security and fairness, three new performance-based English placement test writing prompts were developed in a large midwestern university for incoming students of English as a second language, and the degree of prompt variability was investigated from multiple perspectives, including "fit-to-specification,"…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…