The policy diffusion framework is critical to understanding the spread of policy innovations such as charter schools in the United States. This framework, however, is less instructive in explaining the state-by-state configuration of these policies. What explains the wide variation in charter school policy among states? This study addresses this…

Because variables may be correlated in the social and behavioral sciences, multicollinearity might be problematic. This study investigates the effect of collinearity manipulated in within and between levels of a two-level confirmatory factor analysis by Monte Carlo simulation. Furthermore, the influence of the size of the intraclass correlation…

Online adaptive tutoring systems are increasingly being used in classrooms as a way to provide guided learning for students. Such tutors have the potential to provide tailored feedback based on specific student needs and misunderstandings. Bayesian knowledge tracing (BKT) is used to model student knowledge when knowledge is assumed to be changing…

This teaching note gives a real-life example of Bayesian thinking. It discusses how credible accusations are that the outcome of the draw for the quarter-finals in the 2013 European Champions League Football was manipulated.

Background: Economists are making increasing use of measures of student achievement obtained through large-scale survey assessments such as NAEP, TIMSS, and PISA. The construction of these measures, employing plausible value (PV) methodology, is quite different from that of the more familiar test scores associated with assessments such as the SAT…

The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) offers publicly funded vouchers to students in low-performing schools with family income no greater than 250% of the poverty line, allowing them to enroll in participating private schools. Initially established in 2008 as a pilot program in New Orleans, the LSP was expanded statewide in 2012. This article…

This study uses logistic and multinomial logistic regression models to analyze neighborhood factors affecting EMO (Education Management Organization)-operated schools' locational attributes (using census tracts) in 41 states for the 2014-2015 school year. Our research combines market-based school reform, institutional theory, and resource…

The purpose of this annual report is to provide a summary of measurement in physical education and exercise science-related activities in 2017. A recent trend for an annual increase in manuscript submissions to measurement in physical education and exercise science continued in 2017. Twenty-nine countries were represented (i.e., corresponding…

The prevalence and risk of foster care involvement among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relative to children with intellectual disability (ID), children with ASD and ID, and typically developing children were examined using 2001-2007 Medicaid data. Children were followed up to the first foster care placement or until the end of 2007;…

In applications of item response theory (IRT), an estimate of the reliability of the ability estimates or sum scores is often reported. However, analytical expressions for the standard errors of the estimators of the reliability coefficients are not available in the literature and therefore the variability associated with the estimated reliability…

Background: Recent research among cancer survivors suggests that health behaviors and coping are intertwined, with important implications for positive behavior change and health. Informal caregivers may have poor health behaviors, and caregivers' health behaviors have been linked to those of survivors. Aims: This hypothesis generating study…

Despite the body of research on auditory-visual speech perception in infants and schoolchildren, development in the early childhood period remains relatively uncharted. In this study, English-speaking children between three and four years of age were investigated for: (i) the development of visual speech perception--lip-reading and visual…

Utilizing a data set of over 900,000 enrollees in adult basic education programs in New York State between 2005 and 2013, we examine the college enrollment of GED® passers. Upon enrollment in an adult basic education program, participants were asked whether they wanted to attend college after completion; almost 13,000 students both indicated a…

In 1974, and then again in 1996, Martin Feldstein published studies of the impact of the Social Security system on private saving in the U.S. economy. He found that Social Security depressed personal saving by a substantial amount--up to 50 percent. The author uses the Feldstein data and empirical models in this article to illustrate the steps in…

This study investigates how barriers to school-based crime prevention programming moderate the effects of situational crime prevention (SCP) policies on levels of violent crime in U.S. public high schools. Using data from the 2008 School Survey on Crime and Safety, we estimate a series of negative binomial regression models with interactions to…