Financial Accounting Standards Board Accounting Standards Codification: Implications for Access

On July 1, 2009, the Financial Accounting Standards Board officially adopted the Accounting Standards Codification as the sole source of generally accepted accounting principles. The codification is available online, and users may either subscribe to the free Basic View or purchase the Professional View. Although both views provide access to the same content, the Professional View contains more features than the Basic View and provides a significant increase in usability. This article compares the features within the Professional and Basic Views and discusses the implications of access for librarians, researchers, faculty, and students.     

Issues in boys' education: a question of teacher threshold knowledges?

This paper exploresthe effects of specific teacher threshold knowledges about boys and gender on the implementation of a so‐called ‘boy friendly’ curriculum at one junior secondary high school in Australia. Through semi‐structured interviews with selected staff at the school, it examines the normalizing assumptionsand ‘truth claims’ about boys, as gendered subjects, which drive the pedagogical impetus for such a curriculum initiative. This research raises crucial questions about the need for the formulation of both school and governmental policy grounded in sound research‐based knowledge about the social construction of gender and its impact on the lives of both boys and girls and their experiences of schooling. This is crucial, we argue, in light of the recent parliamentary report on boys' education in Australia which rejects gender theorizing and given the failure of key staff in the research school to interrogate thebinary ways in which masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and institutionalized in schools through a particular ‘gender regime’. While some good things are happening in the research school, the failure to acknowledge the social construction of gender means that ultimately the school's programs cannot be successful.     

Art instruction and the Goodenough-Harris drawing test in fifth-graders

The experiment was conducted to assess the effect of ordinary school art instruction in human figure drawing on scores of the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test. Subjects consisted of 44 fifth-grade students attending a suburban parochial school who were members of two preexisting, randomly assigned homeroom classes. Both classes were taught two lessons in art by their regular teachers. The treatment group was taught human figure drawing, and the control group had art lessons excluding figure drawing instruction. The Drawing Test was administered three times, one preinstruction and two postinstruction administrations. Absenteeism reduced treatment and control groups to 14 and 17 subjects, respectively. As predicted, no differences were found in the control group between pretest and postests. The treatment group showed significant gains on both posttests, as well as a significant decline from the first posttest to the second posttest.     

The Media and Educational Testing: In Pursuit of the Truth or in Pursuit of a Good Story?

The measurement community needs to better understand how to interact with the media to effectively disseminate important findings from educational testing efforts. To this end, the current paper will review media coverage of educational testing and related issues and elaborate on areas of concern and opportunities for improved communication between measurement professionals and the media. Common misinterpretations of test results and measurement concepts will be discussed and suggestions for the clearer presentation and explanation of such information will be offered. Also, practical advice and strategies for handling different types of interactions with the media will be provided. The implications of focusing on this topic in the measurement profession and the inherent public value of this focus are highlighted throughout the paper.     

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste: Large-Scale Assessment and the Response to COVID-19

In early spring 2020 the vast majority of US colleges and schools closed for the year due to COVID-19 with no clear direction on when or how these institutions will reopen for in-person instruction. School closures and the associated health concerns haulted large scale admissions testing and required alternative models such as remote proctoring at home, additional flexibility in test sites and administrative conditions, and additional testing dates for the fall. It is clear that access to admissions testing has been greatly reduced despite these efforts resulting in extended deadlines in graduate admissions and the wide-scale adoption of test-optional polcies in undergraduate admissions. This paper traces the efforts undertaken by admissions testing programs to adapt to COVID-19 and the measurement issues which emerge from these efforts.     

Resistance to school-based consultation: A behavioral analysis of the problem

When attempting to consult with school personnel, psychologists frequently encounter various forms of resistance. This paper conceptualizes resistance to consultation services within a behavioral/cognitive behavioral framework, and discusses how resistance can result from contingencies operating at both the system and the building levels.