Evaluating the Graduation Gap: Interventions Designed to Enhance Upper-level Student Success and Commitment

Over the past several decades, there has been a wealth of research identifying factors and conditions of persistence toward graduation for first-year students and more recently transfer students. While previous research recognizes these critical periods, some recent literature suggests that students may face a similar transitional period later in their academic careers as they advance into their major areas of study. To date, there has been a dearth of information exploring upper-level students' success and commitment to graduation. Exploring this later transition might provide a critical link to understanding the graduation gap between those students who persist to graduation and those who drop out. The purpose of this research was to review the intervention programs proscribed by the literature, design an intervention program, and examine the impact of the program on criminal justice students during this advanced transitional phase of their college careers. It examined the direct and indirect effects of the intervention program on both retention and the antecedents of successful retention while controlling for other relevant influences identified in the literature. The results indicated that the intervention had small, but significant positive direct and indirect effects on academic integration, commitment to the university, and graduating in a timely fashion. Policy implications are discussed.     

Developing Expertise With Classroom Assessment in K–12 Science: Learning to Interpret Student Work. Interim Findings From a 2-Year Study

This article reports findings on growth in 3 science teachers' expertise with interpretation of student work over 1 year of participation in a program. The program was designed to strengthen classroom assessment. Using a framework for classroom assessment expertise, we analyze patterns of teacher learning, and the roles of the professional program and the quality of the assessments provided with teachers' instructional materials.     

“Students Should not be Your Friends”: Testimonio by a Latina on Mothering One's Own,Othermothering, and Mentoring Students in the Academy

This article is an autoethnographic account of how I negotiated intersectional identities as a Latina, mother, and professor, mentoring students of color. Specifically, I examine the ways mothering shaped my relationships with the students I mentored. I engaged in “othermothering” and utilized “pedagogies of the home” by creating reciprocal relationships of caring and nurturing. Utilizing critical race theory (CRT) and testimonio, I argue that my identity as a mother of color successfully negotiating the tenure track impacted the ways in which I mentor(ed) students of color.     

Perceptions of Barriers Concerning Effective Online Teaching and Policies: Florida Community College Faculty

This study's purpose was to examine the perceptions of Florida's full-time community college faculty members who teach by distance learning concerning the ten policy areas set forth by Berge and Muilenburg (2000 Berge , Z. L. & Muilenburg , L. Y. ( June 2000 ). Barriers to distance education as perceived by managers and administrators . In M. Clay (Ed.), Distance Learning Administration Annual 2000 . Callaway Gardens , GA : Routledge . Retrieved May 3, 2001, from http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~berge/man_admin.html  [Google Scholar]). Focus group sessions indicated that faculty members felt certain barriers related to their online experiences. Faculty time and compensation, which deals with how much time faculty members spend and how much they are compensated, seemed to be the greatest barrier while access seemed to cause faculty members the least amount of concern. But factors such as training, size of the institutions, and complexity of the programs seemed to play a role in their perceptions.     

Balancing Optimal Assessment with Part-Time Faculty Participation: A Discipline's Dilemma

Part-time faculty need to be brought into the student learning outcomes assessment loop not only to help accreditation, but because they, like full-time faculty, can benefit from assessment. When part-time faculty are not participating in assessment, a sizable percentage of courses are being less effectively taught than they could be. In an attempt to increase part-time faculty in discipline-level assessment at Norco College, we experimented with several assessments that required varied levels of effort by part-time faculty. This piece discusses our experience. We found that peer mentoring and communication were better predictors of part-time faculty participation than stipends, adaptable assessment prompts, or administrative pressure.     

Exploratory analyses to improve model fit: Errors due to misspecification and a strategy to reduce their occurrence

Two Lagrange multiplier (LM) methods may be used in specification searches for adding parameters to models: one based on univariate LM tests and respecification of the model (LM‐respecified method) and the other based on a partitioning of multivariate LM tests (LM‐incremental method). These methods may result in extraneous parameters being included in models due to either sampling error or the model being misspecified. A 2‐stage specification search may be used to reduce errors due to misspecification. In the 1st stage, parameters are added to models based on LM tests to maximize fit. Second, parameters added in the 1st stage are deleted if they are no longer necessary to maintain model fit. Illustrations are presented to demonstrate that errors due to misspecification occur with the LM‐respecified method and are even more likely with the LM‐incremental approach. These illustrations also show how the deletion stage can help eliminate some of these errors.     

Promoting Evidence-based Education Practice and Better Student Outcomes through Improved Consumer Reporting

The past two decades have seen an increased need for better consumer reporting in education. This has resulted in part from a variety of education initiatives sponsored by the US Department of Education (ED) and others. The initiatives have increased the number of school improvement options available to educators and encouraged—or sometimes required—that choices be guided by “scientifically-based research.”