Quantifying Error and Uncertainty Reductions in Scaling Functions: An ITEMS Module

This module describes and extends X‐to‐Y regression measures that have been proposed for use in the assessment of X‐to‐Y scaling and equating results. Measures are developed that are similar to those based on prediction error in regression analyses but that are directly suited to interests in scaling and equating evaluations. The regression and scaling function measures are compared in terms of their uncertainty reductions, error variances, and the contribution of true score and measurement error variances to the total error variances. The measures are also demonstrated as applied to an assessment of scaling results for a math test and a reading test. The results of these analyses illustrate the similarity of the regression and scaling measures for scaling situations when the tests have a correlation of at least .80, and also show the extent to which the measures can be adequate summaries of nonlinear regression and nonlinear scaling functions, and of heteroskedastic errors. After reading this module, readers will have a comprehensive understanding of the purposes, uses, and differences of regression and scaling functions.     

Debating Affirmative Action: Politics,Media, and Equal Opportunity in a “Postracial” America

This article explores how race-conscious education policy is interpreted in the political landscape of a “postracial” America. Based on a qualitative media analysis of the press coverage surrounding Amendment 46, an antiaffirmative action initiative, we examine language, statistics, and messages leveraged by advocates and critics of the ballot measure. We argue that despite using some of the same data sources, terms, and concepts, proponents and opponents of Amendment 46 proposed divergent policies. We analyzed this phenomenon vis-à-vis the framework of conflicting racial projects (Omi &; Winant, 1994 Omi, M. and Winant, H. 1994. Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, New York, NY: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]), moral paradigms of race (Loury, 2002 Loury, G. 2002. The anatomy of racial inequality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.  [Google Scholar]), and interpretations of equality of educational opportunity (Howe, 1997 Howe, K. 1997. Understanding equal educational opportunity: Social justice, democracy and schooling, New York, NY: Teachers College Press.  [Google Scholar]). Arguably, the public's understanding of race-conscious education policies relies in part on opportunities for researchers, journalists, and the public to deliberate about issues related to race. We conclude with some recommendations for fostering more communication and understanding based in deliberative democratic theory (Gutmann &; Thompson, 1996 Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. 1996. Democracy and disagreement, Cambridge, MA: Belknap.  [Google Scholar], 2004).     

The Need for Critical Media Literacy In Teacher Education Core Curricula

The "information era" has brought up new literacies, although most of them are still not part of the K–12 curriculum or the teacher education curriculum. One of these new literacies is critical media literacy. The purpose of this article is to document the urgency for including this new literacy in school and teacher education curricula given the crucial role of media as they touch every issue impacting human life in society. Critical media literacy as understood here includes three dimensions: (1) develop a critical understanding of how corporate for-profit media work, driven by their political and economic vested interests; (2) search for and support alternative, nonprofit media; and (3) characterize the role of teachers in helping students and their parents to become media-literate users and supporters of alternative media. Critical media literacy is founded on the legitimate role of media to serve the public's right to be truly informed, and thereby serve democracy. However, currently we are witnessing an unprecedented concentration of for-profit media into conglomerates, in alliance with the government and especially with the federal regulating agency—Federal Communications Commission—and other powerful institutions and corporations. Starting with this big picture, we examine and document specific cases that illustrate how these conglomerates and their allies work to keep and to expand their power, by means of filtering information, manufacturing consent, and controlling what the public watch, listen to, read, think, believe, taste, dress, look like, speak, and how they perceive themselves. The propaganda behind the banning of bilingual education in California is a clear example in the educational arena of the role of media in helping powerful people to manufacture voters' consent through fabricated stories, misleading ballot question, biased polls, etc. The second dimension of critical media literacy refers to the active involvement of every person, including school children, to support and advocate for alternative, nonprofit, public service-driven media. Given the reasons and the evidence presented, the authors consider that there is an urgency for including critical media literacy in the K–12 school curricula, and therefore in the teacher education core curriculum.     

The effect of free primary education policy on late school entry in urban primary schools in Kenya

Late school entry is driven by several factors, one of the key ones being the cost barrier to schooling. Policies such as free primary education (FPE) that advocate for universal coverage are therefore partly aimed at removing the cost barrier. The Kenyan Government, like many in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), introduced FPE in 2003 with the aim of universalising access to schooling, which is one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) it signed up to achieve. Based on a case study of four sites in Nairobi, the aim of this paper is to assess whether the FPE policy has affected late enrolment. The data used were collected by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) and comprise a sub-sample of 4,325 first-graders during 2000–2005. The paper applies a probit model to assess the impact of the policy on the basis of marginal effects on the predicted probability of late enrolment. The results show that the FPE policy reduces the probability of late enrolment by 14 per cent. The reduction in probability of late enrolment was greater among children residing in slums (16 per cent) than those in non-slums (9 per cent). The main implication of the findings for policy makers is that cost barriers are a likely cause of over-age enrolment.     

Adjoined Piecewise Linear Approximations (APLAs) for Equating: Accuracy Evaluations of a Postsmoothing Equating Method

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of adjoined and piecewise linear approximations (APLAs) of raw equipercentile equating functions as a postsmoothing equating method. APLAs are less familiar than other postsmoothing equating methods (i.e., cubic splines), but their use has been described in historical equating practices of large‐scale testing programs. This study used simulations to evaluate APLA equating results and compare these results with those from cubic spline postsmoothing and from several presmoothing equating methods. The overall results suggested that APLAs based on four line segments have accuracy advantages similar to or better than cubic splines and can sometimes produce more accurate smoothed equating functions than those produced using presmoothing methods.     

Groundworks for a Pedagogy of Evolutionary Love Ethics: Archetypes of Moral Imagination in the Pragmatisms of Peirce and Addams

In this essay, Russell G. Moses argues that Charles Sanders Peirce's article “Evolutionary Love” establishes a general normative framework for a logic of evolutionary, progressive imagination that can be used to elucidate an evolutionary continuity between the normative works of Jane Addams, John Dewey, and Alain Locke. This exercise contributes to an understanding of pragmatism as a philosophy that seizes insights from evolution in order to normatively reconstruct dynamic meanings of truth, reality, ethics, politics, and art. In a dynamic model of progressive evolution — one homologous to the Golden Rule of “love your neighbor” — we find a normative cosmology that animates the moral imagination of philosophy toward what Addams called “democracy and social ethics.” Moses concludes that in the Peircean model, together with subsequent developments, we may ultimately apprehend that evolution suggests a general form of development that may be hypothesized as a worthy normative guide for universal progressive education.     

Effects of traditional and discovery instructional approaches on learning outcomes for learners of different intellectual development: A study of chemistry students in Zambia

This study examined the differential effectiveness of traditional and discovery methods of instruction for the teaching of science concepts, understandings about science, and scientific attitudes, to learners at the concrete and formal level of cognitive development. The dependent variables were achievement, understanding science, and scientific attitude; assessed through the use of the ACS Achievement Test (high school chemistry, Form 1979), the Test on Understanding Science (Form W), and the Test on Scientific Attitude, respectively. Mode of instruction and cognitive development were the independent variables. Subjects were 120 Form IV (11th grade) males enrolled in chemistry classes in Lusaka, Zambia. Sixty of these were concrete reasoners (mean age = 18.23) randomly selected from one of the two schools. The remaining 60 subjects were formal reasoners (mean age 18.06) randomly selected from a second boys' school. Each of these two groups was randomly split into two subgroups with 30 subjects. Traditional and discovery approaches were randomly assigned to the two subgroups of concrete reasoners and to the two subgroups of formal reasoners. Prior to instruction, the subjects were pretested using the ACS Achievement Test, the Test on Understanding Science, and the Test on Scientific Attitude. Subjects received instruction covering eight chemistry topics during approximately 10 weeks. Posttests followed using the same standard tests. Two-way analysis of covariance, with pretest scores serving as covariates was used and 0.05 level of significant was accepted. Tukey WSD technique was used as a follow-up test where applicable. It was found that (1) for the formal reasoners, the discovery group earned significantly higher understanding science scores than the traditional group. For the concrete reasoners mode of instruction did not make a difference; (2) overall, formal reasoners earned significantly higher achievement scores than concrete reasoners; (3) in general, subjects taught by the discovery approach earned significantly higher scientific attitude scores than those taught by the traditional approach. The traditional group outperformed the discovery group in achievement scores. It was concluded that the traditional approach might be an efficient instructional mode for the teaching of scientific facts and principles to high school students, while the discovery approach seemed to be more suitable for teaching scientific attitudes and for promoting understanding about science and scientists among formal operational learners.