This study was designed to answer two key questions about the fixed portions of the fourth, eighth, and tenth grade spring 2003 Idaho Standards Achievement Tests (ISAT) in Reading, Language Usage and Mathematics: (1) To what extent do test items exhibit substantive differences in functioning across student groups formed based on ethnicity and…

Year-to-year rater variation may result in constructed response (CR) parameter changes, making CR items inappropriate to use in anchor sets for linking or equating. This study demonstrates how rater severity affected the writing and reading scores. Rater adjustments were made to statewide results using an item response theory (IRT) methodology…

Although the hope for charter schools is the lessening and eventual elimination of the achievement gap that exists by race and income, this report indicates that charter schools in Milwaukee are mirroring the test score gap of both Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the state of Wisconsin in both fourth grade reading and fourth grade math. Other…

While the influence of individuals' participation in practices of economic subsistence on the development of mathematical knowledge has been widely reported in the literature, there are not as many studies about the relationship between cultural life and mathematical cognition in the context of recreational practices. This article reports a study…

The task seemed straightforward enough: Students taking part in a recent international test were asked to review drawings of five triangles with varying angles and midpoints. Then those teenagers were to read over a paragraph describing the characteristics of a particular triangle and, finally, choose the triangle that fit the description. Of the…

It turns out that in complying with the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), some states have decided to be a whole lot more generous than others in determining whether students are proficient at math and reading. Because each state selects its own testing system and sets its own passing scores, there is no direct way to compare the…

This study assessed whether characteristics of individuals that are predictors of youth problem behavior such as substance use, delinquency, and violence also predict academic achievement. Longitudinal data from 576 students participating in the Raising Healthy Children (RHC) project were analyzed. The RHC project is a study of students recruited…

The Parents Matter! Program (PMP) has developed three interventions for parents of 4th and 5th grade African-American children (9-12 years old). The overarching goal of all three interventions is to provide parents with knowledge, skills, and support for enhancing their efforts to raise healthy children. The interventions are: (1) Enhanced…

A large literature establishes that boys and girls are treated differently in the classroom. Research suggests that this treatment depends upon the gender of the teacher. Using a large data set that observes a matched teacher/student sample over multiple years, this paper explores the impact of teacher and student gender differences on…

The first objective of this study was to establish to what extent metacognitive skill development is associated with intelligence. As a second objective, the generality vs. domain-specificity of maturing metacognitive skills was investigated. Both issues have major implications for the training and transferability of metacognitive skills.…

This paper looks at several dimensions of the grade failure issue in Honduras using a unique data set compiled by the UMCE evaluation project in 1998 and 1999. The analytical framework incorporates econometric analysis of standardized tests and teacher pass/fail decisions for roughly 13,000 second and fourth grade students. The results show that…

Explanation as a genre may support children's reasoning and understanding particularly effectively. In this study, 20 fourth graders were given the task of explaining the effects of a pollutant on an ecosystem to third graders. Before writing, they completed a commercially developed science unit, instruction in reading and writing an explanation,…

Numerous studies have demonstrated a decrease in the expression of internality in French sixth graders as compared to fifth graders. The present study examines normative clearsightedness in addition to internality across four French school grades (fourth to seventh). The results confirmed the sixth-grade drop in internality and showed that the…

A longitudinal investigation determined the growth of reading comprehension from third to fifth grades in a cohort of students who received Language Enrichment (LE), an Orton-Gillingham-based literacy program, during first and second grades. The LE instruction was provided by regular education teachers who received comprehensive training in…

This study investigated whether there was a significant difference between multiple intelligence instruction (MII) and traditionally designed science instruction (TDSI) on fourth grade students' understanding of concepts associated with the "Diversity of Living Things" unit. Students' intelligence types were also examined. There were two…