Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text (PACT) is a text- and discourse-based set of instructional practices that engage students with disciplinary texts as a means of building content knowledge and improving reading comprehension. PACT)s "efficacy" has been the subject of extensive previous trials. The purpose of this study was to…

Shifting to an inquiry-based practice can be challenging. How should teachers get started? How many times should teachers plan for inquiry? What do teachers do when students struggle with inquiry? How long does it take for students to buy in to the inquiry process? These kinds of questions, and the concerns that underlie them, can create an…

Four-parameter models have received increasing psychometric attention in recent years, as a reduced upper asymptote for item characteristic curves can be appealing for measurement applications such as adaptive testing and person-fit assessment. However, applications can be challenging due to the large number of parameters in the model. In this…

The examination of belonging in schools, connecting school belonging to a plethora of academic and psychosocial outcomes, has been well established in the literature. Researchers have measured school belonging most frequently with the Psychological Sense of School Membership, but its psychometric properties have been called into question by…

Analyzing the quality of classroom talk is central to educational research and improvement efforts. In particular, the presence of authentic teacher questions, where answers are not predetermined by the teacher, helps constitute and serves as a marker of productive classroom discourse. Further, authentic questions can be cultivated to improve…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine physical activity (PA)/fitness knowledge and its association with PA and sedentary behavior in youth. Method: Eighth grade students from five schools (N = 660) in a midwestern state completed a PE Metrics written test and the Youth Activity Profile to assess PA/fitness knowledge, PA (at school and…

Given their significance to school violence, this study quantifies the association between bullying victimization and perceptions of safety separately for victimization where the type is not specified versus victimization that is physical in nature. Generalized liner mixed modeling was employed with 5,138 sixth- to eighth-grade students in 24…

This article considers the impact of a high-stakes testing and reporting requirement on students using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools. We describe how such a policy was implemented during the course of a previously authorized multi-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which provided us with data on voucher…

Being an educational leader isn't getting any easier, but it has never been more exciting, especially when one has the opportunity to change the face of education and move it into the 21st century. For some people, this change is fun and invigorating, but for others, it can be downright frightening and painful. So how can teachers and school…

This study examined the effects of testing accommodations on eighth-grade students' performance on large-scale achievement tests and also on their attitudes and reactions to the tests. Findings revealed significant differences in the ways students with and without disabilities experienced testing and how testing accommodations affected students'…

In this article, the author describes a bike trip which marks the culmination of a unit reviewing map-reading capabilities. In seventh grade, students develop various map skills, including cardinal and intermediate directions, how to measure distance on a map using a scale of miles, how to interpret the legend of a map, and how to locate places…

Background: Cluster-randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…

A vertical scale, in principle, provides a common metric across tests with differing difficulties (e.g., spanning multiple grades) so that statements of "absolute" growth can be made. This paper compares 16 states' 2007-2008 effect size growth trends on vertically scaled reading and math assessments across grades 3 to 8. Two patterns…

Nationally, the United States has a higher rate of teen pregnancy than any other industrialized nation. Native American youth have a higher birth rate than the national rate. A full-year healthy relationship program, based on Native American teachings, traditions, and cultural norms, was delivered to all eighth-grade students at a rural tribal…

The disparity between the results of state accountability tests in reading and the fourth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has left many educators dismayed and concerned. In this article the authors describe a comparison of assessment approaches evident in NAEP to the approaches taken in a sample of state tests. The authors…