Equality of educational opportunity at racially isolated schools: Balancing the need for teacher certification with teacher shortage

Providing for equality of educational opportunity at racially isolated schools continues to be an important area of concern for educational policy makers. Quality teachers to staff instruction programs at these schools is essential to promoting equal opportunity for minority groups. Unfortunately, these schools continue to suffer chronic teacher shortages. Recently, California implemented a teacher certification examination (CBEST) designed specifically to improve the quality of teachers entering the profession. An unintended consequence of the certification movement was the exacerbation of the teacher shortage problem at racially isolated schools. The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of teachers who passed and failed the CBEST. The study finds that failure rates are highest among minority teachers that are presently employed. The study also finds that the mathematics knowledge subscale scores best discriminate those passing from those failing the CBEST. An analytical approach for determining optimal cutoff scores on the CBEST which balances the need for certification with the problem of teacher shortage is proposed.     

ATTITUDES ABOUT AGING AND GENDER AMONG YOUNG,MIDDLE AGE,AND OLDER COLLEGE-BASED STUDENTS

Using an updated version of the Aging Semantic Differential, 534 younger, middle age, and older participants from a college community rated female and male targets categorized as ages 21–34 and 75–85. Participants also provided views about their own aging. Repeated measures of analysis of variance examined attitudinal differences by age and gender of targets, and by participant age and gender. Female targets were viewed more positively than males by most rater groups. Older targets were viewed more positively by older participants than by other age groups. Older participants had more positive views about their own aging than did participants of younger or middle ages.     

Empirical observations on the session timeout threshold

The World Wide Web is a popular “tool” for companies. It can be used as a method of communication between companies and their customers; it also allows organizations to setup virtual storefronts that can be accessed by customers from all over the world. The ability to understand customers’ behavior is extremely important as companies strive to increase the usability and profitability of their web service. The concept of a session is a popular unit of measurement used to analyze recorded information. However, this concept is currently rather abstract and lacks definition. How we measure a session is a fundamental question for web services utilizing this concept. Currently, this question has no real answer. This paper presents a session timeout threshold model based on empirical observations as an initial answer to this question. The model seeks to provide accurate session data with respect to individual web services.     

Evaluating metacognitive scaffolding in Guided Invention Activities

Invention and Productive Failure activities ask students to generate methods that capture the important properties of some given data (e.g., uncertainty) before being taught the expert solution. Invention and Productive Failure activities are a class of scientific inquiry activities in that students create, implement, and evaluate mathematical models based on data. Yet, lacking sufficient inquiry skills, students often do not actualize the full potential of these activities. We identified key invention strategies in which students often fail to engage: exploratory analysis, peer interaction, self-explanation, and evaluation. A classroom study with 134 students evaluated the effect of supporting these skills on the quality and outcomes of the invention process. Students in the Unguided Invention condition received conventional Invention Activities; students in the Guided Invention condition received complementary metacognitive scaffolding. Students were asked to invent methods for calculating uncertainties in best-fitting lines. Guided Invention students invented methods that included more conceptual features and ranked the given datasets more accurately, although the quality of their mathematical expressions was not improved. At the process level, Guided Invention students revised their methods more frequently and had more and better instances of unprompted self-explanations even on components of the activity that were not supported by the metacognitive scaffolding. Classroom observations are used to demonstrate the effect of the scaffolding on students’ learning behaviours. These results suggest that process guidance in the form of metacognitive scaffolding augments the inherent benefits of Invention Activities and can lead to gains at both domain and inquiry levels.     

The community college and the disadvantaged

The objective of this study is to empirically explore the extent to which public two-year colleges in this country are characterized by open admissions policies and by comprehensive curricula, as well as the extent and nature of programs for the disadvantaged within these institutions. Utilizing a stratified sampling design developed by the research staff of the American Council on Education, a precoded original questionnaire was mailed in the spring of 1971 to the chief administrative officer for each institution in the sample. It was found that only a little over half of the colleges have the curricula offerings and admissions policies of exemplary community colleges, but that all reported special courses, programs, or services for the academically disadvantaged minority group. However, only 40% of our sample indicated that they have developed special programs (as opposed to courses or services). Too, community colleges with programs require (1) more resources in preparing faculty for dealing effectively with the disadvantaged, (2) additional emphasis on recruitment of the disadvantaged, and (3) more attention to developing courses in ethnic studies.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, February 1973. Partial support for the project from which this paper was developed was provided by the U.S. Office of Education (Contract #OEC-0-70-4283 (399) to the Pennsylvania State Department of Education). The author also wishes to acknowledge the contribution of Reynolds Ferrante, graduate student, Pennsylvania State University, who assisted in the literature review and questionnaire development of the project.     

Technical characteristics of the peabody individual achievement test as a function of item arrangement and basal and ceiling rules

The effects that item order and basal and ceiling rules have on test means, variances, and internal consistency estimates for the PIAT mathematics and reading recognition subtests were examined. Seven items on the math subtest and one item on the reading recognition subtest were significantly easier or harder than their test placement indicated. The use of basal and ceiling rules had a pronounced effect on the means, variances, and reliabilities on the multiple choice math subtest, while the rules' effects on the reading recognition subtests were minor. Item order also affected scores on the math subtest.