The Politics of Teacher Evaluation: A Case Study of New System Design and Implementation

The purpose of this article is to describe the political aspects of the implementation of a new teacher evaluation system through the means of an observational case study. Designing and implementing a systemwide reform such as that involved in a new teacher evaluation system often is emotionally laden and politically challenging. Technical expertise is required in defining what constitutes good teaching and selecting appropriate methods for collecting accurate data. Equally important, however, is a sophisticated political understanding of how to structure the development and implementation processes to optimize the support of various stakeholders for the new evaluation system. In addition to describing the phenomenon, policy and practice recommendations will be offered to facilitate the negotiation of such a change.     

Binge-eating and vomiting: A survey of a high school population

A survey of 421 high school females was conducted to determine the prevalence of the binge/purge practice, bulimia, an eating disorder. Teenage vomiters in this study were found to have higher levels of somatic symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, and depression than did nonvomiters. They were also found to have disturbed attitudes toward food, eating, and dieting. Of the vomiters, 58% scored above the threshold score that indicates the presence of psychological and behavioral symptoms characteristic of anorexia nervosa. The findings provide information useful to school personnel who work with the social, behavioral, and academic problems of adolescents.     

The Use of Task Analysis Procedures by Instructional Designers

The purpose of this study was to learn about the use of task analysis procedures by instructional designers. Task analysis is regarded by many to be the most integral part of the instructional design process and the most technical aspect of the instructional designer's job. It is also thought to be the most ambiguous of the instructional design, processes. A questionnaire was developed that surveyed 164 members of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) with instructional design responsibilities. This research learned what instructional design activities designers associate with task analysis and the percentage of time instructional designers devote to task analysis. It also learned what task analysis methods are most and least often used by instructional designers and identified those task analysis methods not known by instructional designers. Finally, this study determined how instructional designers learn to conduct task analyses and the factors that impact task analysis practices.     

The effects of strategic counting instruction,with and without deliberate practice,on number combination skill among students with mathematics difficulties

The primary purpose of this study was to assess the effects of strategic counting instruction, with and without deliberate practice with those counting strategies, on number combination (NC) skill among students with mathematics difficulties (MD). Students (n = 150) were stratified on MD status (i.e., MD alone versus MD with reading difficulty) and site (proximal versus distal to the intervention developer) and then randomly assigned to control (no tutoring) or 1 of 2 variants of NC remediation. Both remediations were embedded in the same validated word-problem tutoring protocol (i.e., Pirate Math). In 1 variant, the focus on NCs was limited to a single lesson that taught strategic counting. In the other variant, 4–6 min of practice per session was added to the other variant. Tutoring occurred for 16 weeks, 3 sessions per week for 20–30 min per session. Strategic counting without deliberate practice produced superior NC fluency compared to control; however, strategic counting with deliberate practice effected superior NC fluency and transfer to procedural calculations compared with both competing conditions. Also, the efficacy of Pirate Math word-problem tutoring was replicated.     

Effects of weight on children's educational achievement

In this paper, we investigate the association between weight and children's educational achievement, as measured by scores on Peabody Individual Achievement Tests in math and reading, and grade attainment. Data for the study came from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), which contains a large, national sample of children between the ages of 5 and 12 between 1986 and 2004. We obtained estimates of the association between weight and achievement using several regression model specifications that controlled for a variety of observed characteristics of the child and his or her mother, and time-invariant characteristics of the child. Our results suggest that, in general, children who are overweight or obese have achievement test scores that are about the same as children with average weight.