Item response theoretic methods are applied to the measurement of achievement of students from various instructional backgrounds. This extended item response theory (IRT) approach serves as a tool for studying instructional bias, or instructional sensitivity. The model maintains the form of an IRT model, but has parameters that quantify the extent…

To assess the impact of the North Carolina Career Development Plan (CDP) on student achievement, results of the California Achievement Tests, administered annually in North Carolina public schools, were analyzed. The focus was on the performance of children in grades 3, 6, and 8 in the school years from 1985-86 through 1988-89 in 16 CDP units.…

A study was conducted to examine the feasibility of using scores on the districts' standardized norm-referenced tests (NRTs) to predict performance on Florida's State Student Assessment Tests (SSAT) at grades 3, 5, and 8, and on the SSAT-I and SSAT-II given in grade 10. Specific questions about the use of district scores were addressed in a study…

In response to state mandates, the Hawaii Department of Education (HDE) began reporting on the current achievement status and progress of students scoring in the lowest three stanines of the Stanford Achievement Tests (SAT). The Longitudinal Student Achievement Monitoring (LSAM) process is described and evaluated; it was established to monitor low…

Several research and evaluation studies completed in bilingual education programs for language minority children in Canada are presented to support the claim that heritage, or first, language (HL) literacy plays an important role in the acquisition of a third language. A study completed by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education…

A pilot study examined the effect of a read-aloud literature program on the attitudes of middle school students toward reading. A randomly selected group of 70 teachers and 1,673 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students from four regions of the United States and one region in Europe participated. Testing the hypothesis that student attitudes…

An intervention project was conducted to determine if affirmative action strategies had an effect on promoting nontraditional program and course selection among 460 eighth and tenth grade students from urban, suburban, and rural communities in New York. The groups, about half male and half female, were divided into a control group and an…

In 1983-84, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) administered a 15-task writing assessment in grades 4, 8, and 11. The tasks involved informative, persuasive, and imaginative writing, and were evaluated at one of four levels of success: unsatisfactory; rudimentary or minimal performance; satisfactory; or detailed and controlled…

This study investigated interaction and achievement in cooperative small groups in four junior high school mathematics classrooms. Ninety-six students learned a one-week unit on consumer mathematics in mixed-ability or uniform-ability groups. Students in mixed-ability groups scored higher on a problem-solving test than students in uniform-ability…

At-risk students are defined as those who are in danger of not graduating from school. These potential dropouts can be characterized by a variety of factors that lead to educational underachievement. In this study, the outcome explored is "outcast," a combination of student behavioral factors that captures student alienation from school…

The assessment instruments of the Maine Educational Assessment emphasize extended constructed-response questions. The results from these assessments are reported in terms of percentages of students at four performance levels. The Student-Based Constructed-Response Method was used to establish performance standards for these levels on the…

The focus of this paper is to further understanding of the distribution and the effects of an expanded conception of opportunity to learn on student mathematics achievement. In addition to descriptive statistics, a set of two-level hierarchical linear models was employed to analyze a subset of the restricted-use National Education Longitudinal…

A longitudinal study of various measures of creativity was conducted to determine the validity of a number of possible predictors of an arts orientation. Tests of creative thinking, creative personality, divergent thinking, intelligence, and school achievement were administered to above-average fifth-graders (N=23), who also drew pictures based on…

An at-risk profile instrument was developed for identification and service delivery for high risk students to identify students in a timely manner so that intervention could occur on a proactive, rather than reactive, basis; and to assist school district personnel to implement, monitor, and modify programmatic and staffing patterns to best meet…

Theoretical tools from cognitive science were used to put together a framework for a fine-grained theory of how students learn elementary algebra in the classroom. Developing the framework included assessing the shortcomings of current models, evaluating whether unified theories of cognition can be adapted for learning mathematics in the…