This study sought to develop an Academic School Climate Scale measuring students' perceptions of the learning environments at their schools. With a pilot sample of 1,265 students and validation sample of 14,773 students in Grades 4-12 in schools across the U.S., results of EFA and CFA supported a bifactor model with a general factor and three…

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the extent to which students who took a computer adaptive test of reading comprehension accounting for testlet effects were administered fewer passages and had a more precise estimate of their reading comprehension ability compared to students in the control condition. A randomized controlled…

The purpose of this technical report is to describe the third operational administration of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments in the 2016-2017 academic year. PARCC is a state-led consortium creating next-generation assessments that, compared to traditional K-12 assessments, more accurately…

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a state-led consortium designed to create next-generation assessments that, compared to traditional K-12 assessments, more accurately measure student progress toward college and career readiness. The PARCC assessments are aligned to the Common Core State Standards…

There is a lack of valid and reliable low cost observational instruments to measure moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school physical education (PE). The participants in this study were third to tenth grade boys and girls from a south Texas school district. The SAM (Simple Activity Measurement) activity levels were compared with…

Item response theory (IRT) methods are generally used to create score scales for large-scale tests. Research has shown that IRT scales are stable across groups and over time. Most studies have focused on items that are dichotomously scored. Now Rasch and other IRT models are used to create scales for tests that include polytomously scored items.…

A developmental writing scale for timed essay-writing performance was created on the basis of automatically computed indicators of writing fluency, word choice, and conventions of standard written English. In a large-scale data collection effort that involved a national sample of more than 12,000 students from 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade,…

The present study examined the validity of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES) [Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006a). Development and validation of the Basic Empathy Scale. "Journal of Adolescence," 29, 589-611; Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006b). Examining the relationship between low empathy and bullying. "Aggressive…

This study investigated the convergent and discriminant validity of the high-stakes Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) in both reading and writing at grade levels 4, 8, and 10. The data from the 2006 FCAT administration were analyzed via traditional multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) analysis to identify the factor structure and structural…

The purpose of this study was to validate the instrument, Administrator Dispositions Index (ADI), that measures the dispositions of effective school leaders. The ADI could be used to assess administrator candidate dispositions and to integrate dispositions of effective school leaders into the curricula of administrator preparation programs.…