This paper presents a secondary analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) dataset. The study explores differences in the NAEP fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade reading scores by students' gender across the years 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2003. The study used the NAEP National Public School data. The statistically…

"The Bell Curve" by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray has generated enormous debate as a result of its claim that there is a connection between race and intelligence. The essays of this collection respond to "The Bell Curve" in various ways. Taken together, the following offer an antidote to a work of dubious premises…

Describes behavior analysis as a radical approach for solving educational research problems that prebehavioristic social science has not solved; compares the methodology and assumptions of behavior analysis and conventional social science research; and suggests that misinformation has resulted in an irrational bias against behaviorism among…

Presents three conference papers from the Association of Library and Information Science Education 1990 Annual Conference that deal with the role of qualitative research in information settings. Highlights include qualitative methodology in cultural institutions; emphasizing the user; and two studies on information management, one using…

A critical curriculum promoting mathematical literacy can be effective in involving more people of color in mathematics and science fields. A program that conveys the relevance of mathematics and statistical knowledge can be politically and socially empowering. Describes how ethnomathematics challenges the Eurocentric dichotomy between practical…

This article responds to a critique of a study in which an ambitious program of thinking skills instruction was designed, implemented, and evaluated. Concepts of intelligence and thinking skills are explored, the relationship between the two is analyzed, and the impact of instruction on both is considered. (IAH)

Inferences that might be made from international educational assessments are discussed, considering issues of popular definition and sampling, assessment exercises, background variables, and statistical analyses. International assessments do tell something about academic achievement, but other approaches may provide more cost-effective information…

Shows that intermediate learners of German whose first language is English experience more semantic difficulties when reading an English text and more syntactic difficulties when reading a German version of the same text. A stronger emphasis on syntactic features, such as word category, agreement relationships, tensing, and word placement in the…

It is only a slight exaggeration to describe the test theory that dominates educational measurement today as the application of twentieth-century statistics to nineteenth-century psychology. Sophisticated estimation procedures, new techniques for missing-data problems, and theoretical advances into latent-variable modeling have appeared--all…

This paper examines the applicability of net tuition revenue models for a highly selective, elite priced, private research university in the southern U.S. Pricing and aid strategies for this university seem to be driven by intuitive assumptions about the economy, market forces, needs-blind admissions, student satisfaction, net price…

This article describes a qualitative research approach (in-depth phenomenological interviewing) and illustrates, through the example of an actual study, its potential for helping institutions of higher education understand their students. It argues that progress in understanding college student outcomes, such as persistence, has been retarded by…

Computerized adaptive testing for language teaching and learning takes advantage of two properties of the computer: its number-crunching and multiple-branching capabilities. Adaptive testing has also been called tailored testing because it aims at presenting items that suit the student's competence and that are informative, using an item bank and…

Causes of the significant decrease in productivity growth and dramatic increase in unemployment in the United States since the mid-1960's are examined in order to test the underlying assumption of current economic policies that increasing capital savings and investments will create fuller and more productive employment. Data on trends in…

The role of research and information in legislative decisionmaking is discussed. It is suggested that planning is of marginal utility to state legislatures. The primary obstacles to planning in the legislative arena are the turnover among state legislators, internal shifts of power, and the legislative tendency to deal with discrete policy issues…

The failure of educational research to fully allow for limitations in methodology when drawing conclusions is faulted. In addition to this, a failure on the part of the media--educational and other--to fully publicize these limitations is also criticized. Methodological shortcomings of the 1977-78 American Institutes of Research (AIR) study of…