There is a common classroom refrain, "Don't use "Wikipedia"; it's unreliable." Unfortunately, this simple dismissal of the world's largest repository of information fails to engage students in a critical conversation about how knowledge within "Wikipedia" is constructed and shared. "Wikipedia" is available…

This study describes the development of a special education teacher observation protocol detailing the elements of effective decoding instruction. The psychometric properties of the protocol were investigated through many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM). Video observations of classroom decoding instruction from 20 special education teachers across…

U.S. public education systems are required to provide free appropriate public education to students with disabilities in least restrictive environments that are appropriate to meet their individual needs. The practice of educating students with disabilities in neighborhood schools in age-appropriate general education classrooms and other school…

Trial-to-trial fluctuations in attentional state while performing measures of intelligence were examined in the current study. Participants performed various measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence while also providing attentional state ratings prior to each trial. It was found that pre-trial attentional state ratings strongly predicted…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

Teacher well-being has become a major issue in the United States with increasing diversity and demands across classrooms and schools. With this in mind, the current study analyzed the relationship between outcomes of teacher well-being, including burnout and efficacy, and the implementation of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and…

Three studies are presented that demonstrate the psychometric properties and initial validation of the International Personality Item Pool-Interpersonal Circumplex (IPIP-IPC). The IPIP-IPC is a brief 32-item assessment of the interpersonal cirucmplex designed to be used when time is limited or when participants have difficulty understanding the…

This article describes the use of an observation system to measure middle school staff practices, environment characteristics, and student behavior in the school common areas. Data were collected at baseline from 18 middle schools participating in a randomized controlled trial of school-wide Positive Behavior Support. The observations were…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine which factors related to adult 4-H volunteer empowerment in 4-H youth development settings. This study examined the relationship of adult 4-H volunteers' perceived leadership styles of Oregon 4-H Youth Development Educators (YDE) to the adult 4-H volunteer sense of empowerment. In addition,…

The authors examined the psychometric properties, factor structure, and construct validity of the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) in a large offender sample (N = 1,515). Although the DES is widely used with community and clinical samples, minimal work has examined offender samples. Participants were administered self-report and interview…

This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of embedding character education into the daily functions of instrumental music ensembles at Franklin High School in Portland Oregon. The participants in the study were the students of the researcher which may have been a delimitation. Their ages were from 14 to 19 years. Students from…

In today's economy, employers increasingly demand that workers have a high school diploma, yet America's graduation rates are unacceptably low, particularly among poor and minority students. Nationally, only about 70 percent of students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma; for African American and Hispanic students, this…

In this series of studies, we investigated the technical adequacy of three curriculum-based measures used as benchmarks and for monitoring progress in three critical reading- related skills: fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. In particular, we examined the following easyCBM measurement across grades 3-7 at fall, winter, and spring…

Item response theory (IRT) is based on the assumption that a direct relationship exists between an examinee's total performance on a set of items and the difficulty of each item on the test. The Rasch model represents this relationship mathematically on an equal interval scale. This paper argues that IRT, under the required conditions, provides…

Objective: This study reports on the development and test of a multidimensional measure of client engagement in child welfare services. Method: Five dimensions of engagement were identified and were based on a literature review and data from interviews with child welfare workers and clients. A pool of items generated to reflect these five…