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Eric.ed.gov – Review of “Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude?”

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The research report reviewed here concludes that many initially high-achieving students are falling further and further behind over the course of their years in school. The report intends to raise the alarm and to advocate for improved programs for these students. It is, however, a false alarm due to biased methodology and misleading arguments. The report’s norm-referenced framework guarantees “losers” as well as “winners,” regardless of any true improvement made by the students. Also, the “regression to the mean” effect produces a false illusion of a tradeoff of over-progress by low achievers at the cost of under-progress for high achievers. Finally, its prescription for stronger school accountability for high-achieving students under NCLB does not follow research-based guidance on how to improve student learning. Other research, including that… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – The Alignment of the easyCBM Middle School Mathematics CCSS Measures to the Common Core State Standards. Technical Report #1208

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Within a response to intervention framework, teachers regularly base important instructional decisions on the results of formative assessments. The validity of these decisions depends, in part, upon the validity of the inference of students’ skills drawn from the formative assessment. If formative assessment items do not genuinely measure the skills they purport to measure–that is, if they are misaligned with their content standards–then the resulting inferences may be threatened. Alignment is thus critical, given the potential practical repercussions of misalignment (e.g., students denied needed interventions). In the following technical report, we report on the alignment of a randomly selected sample of roughly half the easyCBM CCSS middle school math items with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Results suggest a high degree of alignment, with 87% of… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Middle Level Mathematics Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Growth through Professional Development: Differences Based on Mathematical Background

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Profile analyses were used to investigate differences in the self-efficacy growth of teachers with more and less mathematics background as the teachers participated in professional development across two summers. Professional development activities were associated with increases in teachers’ self-efficacy; however, without considering mathematics knowledge for teaching, teachers with more math background tended to benefit more than those with less background. Nonetheless, teachers with less math background had higher levels of teacher self-efficacy although this gap was closed by the last measurement. Such considerations are important when designing professional development as teachers may have different needs based on specific characteristics such as preparation in their teaching domain. (Contains 3 tables and 4 figures.) Link til kilde

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Eric.ed.gov – Study of the Reliability of CCSS-Aligned Math Measures (2012 Research Version): Grades 6-8. Technical Report #1312

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In this technical report, we describe the results of a study of mathematics items written to align with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in grades 6-8. In each grade, CCSS items were organized into forms, and the reliability of these forms was evaluated along with an experimental form including items aligned with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Focal Point Standards. The purpose of the experimental measure was to evaluate how previously existing math items functioned empirically relative to the CCSS items. All included NCTM items were previously rated as linked with the CCSS. Analyses included Rasch modeling to explore the difficulty and functioning of both sets of items, classical reliability statistics (Cronbach’s alpha, testretest, and alternate form reliability) and two sets of Generalizability… Continue Reading