Inconsistency in real-world judgments can cause random unfairness, injustice and misallocation of resources. In their recent monograph Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein (2021) analyse judgment inconsistency or "Noise," examine its sources and propose remedies. In this commentary on Kahneman et al., we reflect on the major concepts (such as…

This commentary will take an historical perspective on the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA) error analysis, discussing where it started, where it is today, and where it may be headed in the future. In addition, the commentary will compare and contrast the KTEA error analysis procedures that are rooted in psychometric methodology and…

This paper offers a critical review of a report published in March by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan titled "Improving Oversight of Michigan Charter Schools and Their Authorizers." The report argues that charter schools and charter school authorizers need more oversight. Making the case for this position might include…

In this response to Kalenic-Craig's (2017) article, "The Rights of the Learner: A Framework For Promoting Equity through Dynamic Formative Assessment," I consider what implications the RotL framework has for the work that teachers and students must do in learning environments where these rights flourish. The RoTL emphasizes student…

The study by Tamburelli, Jones, Gobet, and Pine (2012; henceforth TJGP) is a very welcome addition to the body of work concerning nonword repetition in typical development. TJGP go beyond previous work in considering three syllabic positions--onset, nucleus, and coda--with the aim of investigating how the positional role of phonemes within the…

Respect is important because it contributes to a context of safety, openness, and reflection; this context is crucial for the brain to effectively process and encode academic material, as opposed to being preoccupied with emotional concerns. Although educators genuinely intend to foster respect--and they spend much time identifying and following a…

In the May 2010 issue of "Psychological Bulletin," R. E. McGrath, M. Mitchell, B. H. Kim, and L. Hough published an article entitled "Evidence for Response Bias as a Source of Error Variance in Applied Assessment" (pp. 450-470). They argued that response bias indicators used in a variety of settings typically have insufficient data to support such…

Social psychologists are persuaded that researchers as well as laymen tend to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the influence of situations on observed behavior. The author of this article suggests that education researchers and policy makers may be overestimating the role of personal qualities in their quest to…

One of the abiding problems in the study of American Indians is that it is plagued by stereotyping and romanticism. In the history of ideas in Europe and the United States, negative as well as positive stereotyping has been called "primitivism." Much of the author's work has been an attempt to get beyond primitivism in order to get to…

J. S. Adelman and G. D. A. Brown (2008) provided an extensive analysis of the form of word frequency and contextual diversity effects on lexical decision time. In this reply, the current authors suggest that their analysis provides a valuable tool for the evaluation of models of lexical access and that the results they report are broadly…

Recent federal education policies and reports have generated considerable debate about the meaning, methods, and goals of "scientific research" in mathematics education. Concentrating on the critical problem of determining which educational programs and practices reliably improve students' mathematics achievement, these policies and reports focus…

In a project-based approach to teaching a foreign language at the university level, students are often required to participate in several task-based writing activities. In doing so, language learners not only write incorrect forms, but also correct forms of the same structures, both of which provide useful information on their strengths and…

Discusses one threat to statistical conclusion validity, the fishing and error rate problem (FERP), also called alpha inflation. Notes that alpha inflation increases probability of false positive findings (finding statistically significant differences in sample data when such differences do not exist in population). Enumerates suggestions to help…

Describes system design proposed by the Spelling Error Detection Correction Project (SPEEDCOP) at Chemical Abstracts Service. Highlights include principles of detection/correction system; spelling error detection (the dictionary, suffix normalization, bypassing specialized word classes, document-level frequency threshold); spelling error…

The writing teacher's foremost job is leading students to see the valuable ideas they have to express. Writing is a way to share those ideas with the world rather than a way to be wrong, Anderson asserts. Teachers and parents too often focus on errors in student writing. This focus gives students the impression that writing well is about avoiding…