Using Test Scores From Students With Disabilities in Teacher Evaluation

Much of the recent focus of educational policymakers has been on improving the measurement of teacher effectiveness. Linking student growth to teacher effects has been a large part of reform efforts. To date, neither researchers nor practitioners have arrived at a consensus on how to treat test scores from students with disabilities in growth‐based teacher effectiveness indicators, despite the fact that these students make up approximately 13% of the K‐12 student population. In this study, we leverage longitudinal data from the population of teachers in one state to explore practical questions related to including general assessment scores from students with disabilities in teacher evaluation. Findings suggest that including test scores from students with disabilities allows more teachers to be evaluated and does not substantially affect teachers’ scores. Moreover, including disability‐related covariates can allow for fairer evaluations for teachers with many students with disabilities in their class.     

Towards a structural inequality framework for student retention and success

ABSTRACT

University campuses are increasingly diverse, reflecting substantial growth in student enrolments, but this has not translated to equitable outcomes for all students. While much attention has been focused on student retention and success, particularly for those from non-traditional backgrounds, dominant theoretical models rest on a limited notion of cultural capital that places undue responsibility on students themselves. We suggest that structural inequality, whereby some people receive unequal privileges and opportunities, offers a more productive, less problematic framework for use by academic staff, university leaders and policy makers to address these challenges. In this article, we identify three types of structural inequality – vertical, horizontal, and internal – and include a taxonomy of internal inequalities to prompt further research and policy outcomes. Put simply, rather than ask how students can build cultural capital to assimilate to their institutions, we should ask what institutions can do to include students, staff, and the wider community.     

Exploring the Structure of Teachers’ Emotional Labor in the Classroom: A Multitrait–Multimethod Analysis

This study tests whether teachers’ emotional labor in classroom settings is optimally conceptualized according to the type of emotional labor strategy involved (genuinely expressing, hiding, and faking emotions), the specific type of emotion being performed in class (e.g., enjoyment vs. pride vs. anxiety), or both strategy type and emotion type. Multitrait–multimethod analyses of 1,086 Canadian teachers’ survey responses showed teachers’ responses to emotional labor items to be most reliably differentiated according to both specific types of emotional labor strategies as well as the valence of the emotion being performed. Findings were largely consistent with common “display rules” encouraging expression of positive emotions and hiding of negative emotions by teachers in classroom settings. Results further showed teachers’ emotional labor strategies for negative emotions to be particularly contingent on the specific discrete emotion involved, highlighting the complexity of expressing negative emotions as a behavior management strategy.     

Grade Inflation Marches On: Grade Increases from the 1990s to 2000s

Grade inflation threatens the integrity of college grades as indicators of academic achievement. In this study, we contribute to the literature on grade inflation by providing the first estimate of the size of grade increases at the student level between the mid‐1990s and mid‐2000s. By controlling for student characteristics and course‐taking patterns, we are able to eliminate alternative explanations for grade increases. Our results suggest that grade inflation has occurred across decades, at a small yet non‐negligible rate. Suggestions for future research are discussed.     

A Victorian hope for aerial navigation: Argyll as a theorist of flight and the first president of the Aëronautical Society of Great Britain

In 1866 the Aëronautical Society of Great Britain was founded with George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (1823–1900) as first president, and patron. The purpose of the society was to further the study of aerial navigation as well as to make aeronautics a respectable science, and today the society--now the Royal Aeronautical Society--serves as a professional body dedicated to aerospace research. There were two fundamental areas of scientific knowledge key to the society in its initial decades: 1) a detailed understanding of the principles of bird flight, and 2) the practical application of that knowledge in the construction of flying machines. Argyll firmly belonged to the former being a well-seasoned ornithologist and theorist of flight, and, with the publication of his best-selling book The Reign of Law (1867), was one of the first to popularise the theoretical principles of bird flight. In this paper, I examine the relationship between bird and mechanical flight through Argyll's ornithological studies, with a focus on the various factors early in Argyll's life that led to his eventual position as president of the Aëronautical Society. By analysing the influence of his family relations, home environment and religious convictions, I show how Argyll’s scientific undertakings existed as part of a wider network of theistic Victorian aristocrats who contributed to the creation and professionalization of scientific disciplines in a way that contrasted markedly with the methods of many of the scientific naturalists.     

“The Effort of Reason,and the Adventure of Beauty”: The Aesthetic Rhetoric of Randolph Bourne

We are still coming to terms with the legacy of Randolph Bourne. Although he died at the age of 32 just as the United States was cheerfully entering the First World War under the banner of “democracy,” the words he penned in an unfinished essay still resonate in the American social conscience: “War is the Health of the State.” This maxim, once thought the exclusive property of leftist radicals, now can be heard echoing from every political corner of the blogosphere as progressives and libertarians alike find cause to question the motives of governmental power. Yet despite his reappearance as a symbol, Bourne in many ways remains as forgotten as ever—perhaps even more so as his once provocative claim has been transformed into a talking point. This essay endeavors to recapture the voice of Bourne in all its complexity, seeking to place him at the forefront of the contemporary American intellectual tradition as one of its most piercing critics, most visionary poets, and most eloquent rhetors. Specifically, we show how Bourne's critique of the “State” foresaw the rise of the technological society organized by ideological propaganda, how his vision of the Beloved Community anticipated our modern ideals of global transnationalism, and how his literary essays practiced a form of aesthetic rhetoric which employed dramatistic methods to bring about a new state of expanded social consciousness.     

Remembering the AIDS Quilt

FUNDAMENTALS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. By Donald C. Bryant and Karl R. Wallace. (Second edition). New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, Inc., 1953; pp. xiv+493. $4.00.

BASIC TRAINING IN SPEECH. By Lester Thonssen and Howard Gilkinson. (Second edition). Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1953; pp. 494. $4.00.

AN INFORMAL GUIDE TO PUBLIC SPEAKING. By William Freeman. Edited by Quincy Howe. (Revised edition). New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953; pp. xiv+141. $2.95.

NOTEBOOK FOR VOICE AND DICTION. By Lyle V. Mayer. Dubuque, Iowa: Win. C. Brown Co., 1953; pp. vii+168. $2.50.

COMMON ERRORS IN ENGLISH AND HOW TO AVOID THEM. By Alexander M. Wither‐spoon. (Everyday Handbook Series. #240). New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1952; pp. 344. $1.25.

AMERICAN PROBLEMS TODAY. By Robert Rienow. Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1953: pp. xv+704. $4.00.

THE WRITER IN AMERICA. By Van Wyck Brooks. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1953; pp. 203. $3.00.

PEOPLE, PLACES, AND BOOKS. By Gilbert Highet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953; pp. x+277. $3.50.

ALWAYS THE YOUNG STRANGERS. By Carl Sandburg. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953; pp. 445. $5.00.

THE CULTIVATION OF COMMUNITY LEADERS. By William W. Biddle. New York: Harper &; Brothers, 1953; pp. 203. $3.00.

SPEECHREADING—JENA METHOD. By Anna M. Bunger. (Revised edition). Danville, Illinois: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1952; pp. 109. $2.50.

NOTES ON SCENE PAINTING. By Bradford Ashworth. New Haven, Connecticut: Whit‐lock's, Inc., 1952; pp. 45. $2.00.

LIVING THEATRE. Edited by Alice Venezky Griffin. Foreword by Helen Hayes. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1953; pp. 510. $4.50.

THE THEATER DICTIONARY: BRITISH AND AMERICAN TERMS IN THE DRAMA, OPERA, AND BALLET. By Wilfred Granville. New York: Philosophical Library, 1952; pp. xii+227. $5.00.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION. By A. F. Scott. London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953; Book III, pp. 107. Book IV, pp. 74. Each $1.00

BRITISH AUTHORS BEFORE 1800. Edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1952; pp. vi+ 584. $6.00.     

On the Origins of Violence and Language

Better Everyday English. By H. G. Paul, University of Illinois. Lyons and Carnahan, Chicago, 1924. pp. 279.

Selected Orations. Compiled by Albert Mason Harris. Cokes‐bury Press, Nashville, Tenn., 1924. Pp. 439.

Gentlemen of the Jury. By Francis L. Wellman. The Macmillan Company. 1924. Pp. 298.

Costuming A Play. By Elizabeth B. Grimbal and Rhea Wells. New York. The Century Co. 1925. 135 pages.

Abraham Lincoln: Master of Words. By Daniel K. Dodge. D. Appleton, New York. 1924. Pp.178.     

Anarchist education and the paradox of pedagogical authority

This article interrogates a key feature of anarchist education; focusing on a problem with implications not only for anarchist conceptions of education, but for anarchist philosophy and practice more broadly. The problem is this: if anarchism consists in the principled opposition to all forms of coercive authority, then how is this to be reconciled with situations where justice demands the use of coercion in order to protect some particular good? It seems that anarchist educators are forced to deny coercive authority in principle, whilst at the same time affirming it in practice. This is the paradox of pedagogical authority in anarchist education. Coercive authority is simultaneously impossible and indispensable. Exploring this paradox through a reading of Jacques Derrida’s later work, and, in particular, his conception of justice as requiring openness to the singular situation, I argue that in exercising their authority anarchist educators encounter the aporetic moment in anarchism, experiencing what Derrida calls ‘the ordeal of the undecidable’. Understood this way, the paradox becomes less an indication of anarchism’s limitations than it does its value. For it is here that the problem of pedagogical authority is treated with the gravity that all questions of justice deserve.