Showing papers in "Educational Researcher in 1975"

Psychometric Theory— 25 Years Ago and Now

Abstract: This is an account of major de­ velopments in psychometrics dur­ ing the last 25 years, as seen through my eyes and evaluated from my particular points of view. Although I will make some guesses regarding future developments, I mainly want to bring the story up to date. I picked the year 1950 as a starting point for two reasons —one impor­ tant to many researchers in psy­ chology and education and one per­ sonal. The important reason is that 1950 was in the center of an Au­ gustan age for the development of psychometrics, extending from 1940 to 1960 —a period of intense activ­ ity and important developments, the likes of which may not come again nor even be needed again. The per­ sonal reason was that in 1950, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I was being introduced to the field of psychometrics under the tutelage of William Stephenson and Leon Thurstone.

Recent Trends in School Integration

Abstract: I the past ten years, school desegregation has been a major policy issue in education, perhaps the major policy issue. At times, particularly during the period from about 1967 to 1971, it has become a major national issue, but even when no new policies are being initiated or contested at the federal level, the issue remains strong, or suddenly becomes strong, in particular localities. At present, for example, Boston is in the throes of implementing school desegregation between Roxbury and South Boston, Detroit is preparing to implement a city-wide integration plan, Louisville, Kentucky, is preparing integration between the city and the surrounding Jefferson County system; and many systems are operating under court orders.

They Teach Concepts, Don’t They?

Abstract: In specifying the "primitive first requirements" for teaching concepts, I will overlook here a common prejudice that you would expect from an old-timer in programed instruction, namely that the instruction will provide for meaningful student information-processing activities with feedback, and will restrict consideration to the purely formal surface requirements that sufficient information be there for

Mr. Binet’s Test 70 Years Later

Abstract: intelligence test. And so, we may define 1975 as the 70th anniversary of that event-an event that, as much as any in the early years of this century, determined the shape and course of subsequent psychological and educational research, and of psychological and possibly educational practice. For my remarks today, I have chosen to look at a few aspects of that 70-year career. That first set of tasks proposed by Binet stemmed from no elegant theory, nor from any precise definition of intelligence. Binet made no assumptions about the causes or origins of the intellectual deficits that he proposed to study (for his initial concern was primarily with intellectual deficiency), nor about their prognostic significance for future development. He undertook to describe objectively, in the here and now, levels of development of what he described in a very general way as "judgment." The basis of his selection of tasks was very largely empirical try-out with groups of children of various ages in regular school, and comparison of their performance with that of those who were in institutions for

An Organizational Explanation of the Failure of Alternative Secondary Schools

Abstract: B y about 1970, alternative schools had gathered enough momentum for some educators to predict a movement that would supplant conventional secondary schooling within a decade. Rather, the wave of enthusiasm receded, leaving in its wake disillusioned and frustrated educational idealists, a large graveyard of experimental schools, and some schools still functioning in name but merely disguising highly conventional practices with a onceworn cloak of novelty. A handful of alternative schools continue to grope forward in the spirit of the original break from tradition, and a large number of on-campus versions have resulted from the acceptance of alternative ideas by public high schools. But with these exceptions, another educational \"revolution\" seems to have come and gone.

Competencies for Educational Research and Evaluation

Abstract: sociation during the past decade. As part of its activity, the Task Force on Research Training carried out a series of three USOE-supported activities to identify specific skills and knowledge desirable for personnel involved in educational research, evaluation, and related activities.2 In the first activity (Worthen & Gagne, 1969), the Task Force drafted lists of skills they thought were necessary in conducting research and evaluation in education

The Configurational Perspective: A New View of Educational Knowledge Production and Utilization:

Abstract: b. The inadequacies cannot be accounted for or explained away on the basis of conditions (political or structural) that have arisen in the past 2-3 years. In fact, they are embedded in the conceptual view of educational KPU that has come to dominate the field. This perspective, a unified-systems view, presupposes and/or attempts to effect a linked set of productive agents and agencies each of which assumes discrete responsibility for a segment of Research-DevelopmentDiffusion-Adoption effort to achieve a commonly agreed upon goal of ultimate KPU productivity. c. This view has set in motion a cycle of failure in educational KPU productivity by: 1. Establishing unachievable aspirations. 2. Ignoring the idiosyncratic (ideographic) goals of individuals and individual agencies in the educational KPU community. 3. Changing policy and program directions persistently and frequently in an attempt to overcome failures in program achievement provoked by conditions 1 and 2 above.

The Evaluation of Follow Through.

Abstract: T he purpose of this paper is to describe the evaluation of the Follow Through Program. Follow Through was contained in the 1967 Amendments to the Economic Opportunity Act. The Program was to provide comprehensive services to school-aged, low income children and therefore "follow through" with the advantages given to children by Head Start. While a massive program was envisaged, plans were interrupted by the cutback in appropriations given to the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1967. Instead of $120 million to initiate the Program, only $15 million were available. Therefore, the decision was made to use Follow Through as a vehicle for developing and providing field tests for a number of alternative approaches to education in the elementary school. This field test was to be extensively evaluated.

Reanalysis of Coleman’s “Recent Trends in School Integration”1

Abstract: sis. (Project 21-49-004, Report No. 1). School of Aviation Medicine, USAF, Randolph AFB, Texas, 1955. Humphreys, L. G. The organization of human abilities. American Psychologist, 1962,17. 475-483. Kaiser, H. F., & Caffrey, J. Alpha factor analysis. Psychometrika. 1965, 30. 1-14. Kaiser, H. F., & Rice, J. Little Jiffy, Mark IV. Educational and Psychological Measurement. 1974. 34. 111-117. Kuder, G. F., & Richardson, M. W. The theory of estimation of test reliability. Psychometrika. 1937, 2. 151160.

A Paradox About Excellence of Schools and the People in Them

Abstract: E xcellence\" is that of which John Gardner wrote so eloquently. As he observed, it's the stuff in the temperament of both the philosopher and the plumber without which neither theories nor plumbing will hold water. Not surprisingly, excellence eludes attempts to translate it into words. Nonetheless, most of us are in continual pursuit of it. A paradox is easer to define. When two analyses of the same situation lead to contradictory conclusions, one faces a paradox. When the logic of infinitesimals shows Zeno's hare never catching the tortoise but our experience shows us hares catching tortoises, we are in the grip of a paradox.

Education’s Contribution to the Quality of Life of a National Sample of 30 Year-Olds

Abstract: T answers to many important questions relating to individual development and social planning require data from longitudinal studies of representative national samples. There have not been many longitudinal studies and many of those that have been completed have suffered from small sample size, lack of representativeness, or inadequate coverage of relevant variables. The study being reported here is based on one of the better of these longitudinal studies which is known as Project TALENT. It was initiated with the testing of 400,000 secondary school students fifteen years ago in March 1960. The initial data collection involved the administration of tests and questionnaires over a two-day period. The students represented a stratified random sample of all students in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 in the United States. They have been followed up 1, 5, and 11 years after completing high school. An additional follow-up was included in the original design to begin 20 years after the graduation of the first class in 1980. This special study is based on a sub-sample of 1,000 students who were 15 years old when tested by Project TALENT in 1960. This age group was chosen because at the time of the original testing an effort was made in 10 percent of the high school units to locate all 15 yearolds regardless of grade and including those out of school to obtain a complete age group. Special arrangements were made in these schools to administer the complete battery of tests and questionnaires to all of their 15 year-olds (Shaycoft, et al, 1963). Thus it was possible to select a nationally representative sample of persons who were 15 year-olds in 1960 and are now 30 year-olds on whom a large amount of data are available. These data included interest, information, and ability scores; their home background, activities, and plans; and the characteristics of their secondary school including courses offered and the nature of the counselling program.

Qualifications of Professionals in Educational R&D

Abstract: O sign of progression towards maturity in a profession is an increasing concern with the qualifications of its members. Typically, a new profession begins with a little band of dedicated people, held together by strong mutual interests. It proceeds to expand its membership by advertising its aims and conducting deliberate recruiting drives, with the goal of establishing a formal society having a central organization and a continuously employed staff. It undertakes a number of annual and periodic functions, such as the publication of technical journals and the holding of annual meetings. With added membership, it begins to differentiate itself into a number of sub-specialties, each vying for notice, power, and reputation. At about this point in its development, the profession is likely to look inward upon itself and wonder what, in fact, it has become. As a corollary, it is likely also to wonder to what extent its members are truly well qualified to carry out the activities and public services reflected in the charter of the professional organization.

ESEA Ten Years Later

Abstract: Brave and hopeful words, befitting the ebullience both of the man and the atmosphere surrounding the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (P.L. 89-10). Congress had delivered the first installment on the President's pledge to make of education "the first work of these times and the first work of our society." And ESEA, a five-pronged effort, began its work of helping "disadvantaged children," stocking school libraries, promoting community-wide projects for educational change, spurring educational research and development, and upgrading state departments of education. Federal dollars in unprecedented number were to make it all possible. A decade later, educators and education are everywhere on the defensive. Congressional friends of that landmark education act and other Great Society programs still battle for ever-scarcer appropriations but privately worry that the Act may not be "really succeeding." But to this admittedly partial observer, ESEA's accomplishments look better all the time, both in comparison with noneducation governmental expenditures and as a major venture in their own right. What have we achieved with the $16.7 billion appropriated for ESEA over the past decade? What have we bought for a public investment about equal in cost to ten Trident submarines?

Does Busing Improve the Racial Interactions of Children

Abstract: racial interaction and friendship. The assumption has been that academic achievement of black children in bi-racial schools would be highest in integrated settings. This assumption grew out of a decade of esearch by Irwin Katz (1964, 1969, a, b) studying black performance in bi-racial situations. Coleman (1966) studied this phenomenon in the Equal Educational Opportunity Survey, as did Cohen, Pettigrew, Riley (1972), and Armor (1972). These studies have typically involved regressing schools' racial climates on schools' average achievement, rather than direct measures of within school friendship choices. W ile broadscale surveys are useful to produce general overviews, more spe ific detailed probing is necessary if we are to understand whether children of different races interact with one another; and if so, what the effects are of such interactions. The study that follows is an example of the kind of specific inquiry we are advocating. The basic question in this study is: do children in bi-racial elementary schools interact across racial lines and develop friendships with one another.

Women in Educational Research: Their Status from Student to Employee

Abstract: The Committee on the Role and Status of Women within the American Educational Research Association (AERA) decided to send a series of questionnaires to universities, school districts, state departments of education, and major :esearch and development organizations in order to analyze the respective roles and statuses of men and women within AERA. The purpose of these questionnaires was to determine (a) the relative position and status of women as students in doctoral programs in education; (b) the status of women on the faculties of institutions which train educational researchers; and (c) the status of women as employees in research organizations, loce school districts, and state education departments. It was found that women consistently fall in the lower job ranks as determined by responsibility and salary. Even in job categories at the lower end of the rankings, women were paid less than their male counterparts. It was also found that most employers of educational researchers have adopted affirmative action plans, but that a discrepancy exists between adoption and implementation of these plans. While it was found that maternity leave plans are generally available, very few paternity leave plans exist--constituting further evidence of sexually discriminatory practices. Finally, it was noted that heavy reliance exists among friends and colleagues in universities or other research organizations for the recruiting of personnel, which is discriminatory since equal access cannot be guaranteed with such measures. (PB)

Participation of Women in the Educational Research Community

Abstract: T he relationship between wom­ en's professional activity and their professional rewards recently has become a subject of major inter­ est to social scientists. This emerg­ ing concern received impetus from the women's political caucuses with­ in the various social science associa­ tions. This paper addresses a major issue underlying this concern: the need to discover whether or not women's professional activities, as well as their rewards for such activi­ ties, is commensurate with those of men.

Building Partnerships for Educational Research and Development

Abstract: T theme of your meeting, which you have invited me to discuss, is an appropriate topic. May I initially assure you, I per­ sonally believe education research to be of great importance. However, this very title assumes that there is support for education research and development in our country and, to be more specific, in the Congress. This is an assumption which I do not believe can be made. Before we talk about \"building partnerships,\" we must talk about the present climate or view in the Congress of education research and development. We have to talk about the existing National Institute of Education (NIE) and its future life. Right at this point, some may ques­ tion why the fate of the NIE should be treated the same as that of educa­ tion research and development in general. Should not it be treated as a separate governmental agency, with education research and devel­ opment looked upon as a national activity? Unfortunately, to most of the members of the Senate and House, when you talk about educa­ tion research, it is the NIE that

Bradley v. Milliken: Was Busing Really the Question?:

Abstract: threat to this right now comes from the U.S. Supreme Court, the very body charged with upholding the Constitution and the body which recognized the existence of this Constitutional right in the first place. In perhaps its most famous decision, Brown v. Board of Education (I), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," 1 depriving children of equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The fol-

Educational Research And The Public Interest

Abstract: I convinced that the public is more interested than ever before in just about everything that has to do with education. As taxpayers and as parents, the public feels it had better take a hand in an enterprise that so directly affects their pocketbook and their children's education. The public is interested in the costs of education — costs that have gone up 10 percent in the past year alone. The public is interested in how education is managed. What it offers students in intellectual development, social awareness, and career orientation. How it teaches these fundamentals while allowing for the wide differences in student abilities, interests, and aspirations. How it handles such issues as sex education, drug abuse, textbook selection, and desegregation. And, finally, what it is doing, through research and development, to improve performance in all of these interrelated elements of the learning process, from a cost standpoint and from an academic standpoint.

Letters: Popham Response

Abstract: are issues associated with extreme variations in teaching situations and their incorporation in rating instruments. The responsibility for developing and maintaining instructional improvement programs in universities lies in the hands of academic administrators who are faced with political realities within the institution as well as those which determine the institution's relationship with the outside world. Higher education commitments to instructional improvement programs could be further explored, assessed, and improved in a productive way if the following contextual guidelines are followed. The institution applies pressure on faculty to engage in evaluation of instruction for purposes other than improvement, only to the extent that it satisfies societal pressures which the university is unable to ward off. The institution utilizes societal pressures for accountability as an impetus to faculty to engage in instructional improvement and evaluation for improvement for as long as possible. The first guideline will protect the university's commitment to freedom of inquiry. The second will facilitate its commitment to excellence of inquiry, because teaching at the university level does include a scholarly component. Naftaly S. Glasman University of California, Santa Barbara

Letters: Alternative Views of Alternative School Failures

Abstract: Deal (April ’75) states without citation or support that 18 months is the usual life span of an alternative school. This figure is often quoted and appears to have been originated by Harvey Haber, founder of New Schools Exchange. However, in 1970, when he gave this estimate to a reporter, it was pulled from thin air. Based on information from annual subsequent surveys conducted by the Teacher Drop-Out Center (Box 657, Ithaca, NY 14850), the estimate is severely inflated. These statistics indicate that of 3,500 private alternative schools founded since 1964, about 20% have failed, and that of 2,000 public alternative schools, not more than 2% have failed. Some alternative schools may be so ephemeral that they do not get included in these statistics. However, any impression that all alternative schools are short-lived is without foundation. The generality and potency of Deal's organizational explanation of the failure of alternative schools is dubious. Based upon informal inquiry of the same nature as Deal's, let me offer several alternative explanations: lack of money; failure to teach basic skills; failure to include concern for responsibility and discipline with a concern for freedom; failure to provide ongoing, humane, individualized learning; failure to achieve strong adult leaders; failure to provide choices for students, with the choices buttressed by materials and plans; pressures by local public school administrators; teachers' unions and associations, neighbors, and health, fire, and building inspectors; philosophical rifts; burnout of teachers from the vast amount of work involved in a childoriented school. These "explanations" are multiple, complex, and interactive. They warrant systematic inquiry as do the organizational paradigms which Deal treats anecdotally. Indeed, the organizational processes in most alternative schools are different from these processes in traditional schools and have not been explicated well to this point.

Educational Publishing and Educational Research and Development: Selfsame, Symbiosis, or Separate

Abstract: I viewing educational publishing next to educational research and development, an observer is struck by the recognition that whatever their current similarities and differences, the two endeavors have different histories. Educational publishing has had a long and honorable history embedded in the roots of American industry and education. Educational R&D has barely found its infancy. Compared with other major research, industrial, or human service activities, educational R&D is the new kid on the street. Only during the past 20 years have substantial investments been made in educational R&D from either the public or private sectors. For the people concerned with the young endeavor, this short period can seem like several lifetimes, but it is a brief segment in the time line of societal institutions.

The Rand Graduate Institute

Abstract: Now put "non-traditional education" and Rand Corporation together. Impossible, right? Everyone knows Rand is a private research corporation engaged in the analysis of problems in national security and domestic affairs. The only way it might get involved in such nonsense would be if it were studying it. Wrong. The Rand Corporation, in a very real sense, is now engaged in delivering "non-traditional education" through its recently established inhouse university, the Rand Graduate Institute. Although the Institute is more than five years old, it really came of age in the past year as it graduated its first three Ph.D.'s and received full accreditation from the

Educational Researchers React to the Educational Researcher

Abstract: teacher to a course of evaluation for the good of the pupils? The question is not intended to provoke a legal opinion. Rather, it is intended to provoke reflection on the effects of imposing on a person a treatment which can do harm and may not do any good. The issue of compulsory evaluation of teachers gives me most concern. (The companion question of evaluating pupils is equally troubling; I suspect that arguments against evaluating teachers apply perforce to evaluating pupils, but I won't examine them now.) It is problematic whether teacher evaluation will result in salutary \"feedback\" that will quicken or insure their professional growth or whether it will merely provoke wasteful and harmful defensiveness and distrust. No less an empiricist than Fred Kerlinger (1971) wrote recently that student evaluation of their professors will result in \"hostility, resentment, and distrust.\" Kerlinger could find no good resulting from studentevaluations of their instructors, for many of the reasons I've identified here. Conclusion I won't pretend to resolve the paradox about how we achieve excellence. I remain at the same time impressed by what happens to people when they are not evaluated and impressed by the truths and direction that evaluation can provide. As is so often true of educational research, our studies and experiments grow out of the social movements that periodically sweep through education; the movements are not launched by the findings of our studies and experiments. Education has embareked in a grand manner upon the critical experiment on evaluation. There was no proposal written; no contract was let for it; its costs are being underwritten by the efforts of thousands of workers, most of whom are unaware that they are participants in an experimental endeavor. It will take years for the benefits and losses of the treatment to accrue; and in the end, the historian, not the statistician, will read the data. Note Abbreviated from a speech presented at the second annual Pacific Northwest meeting of the Washington Educational Research Association, May 24, 1974. Conversations with a few colleagues have helped: thanks are due especially to Mary Lee Smith, University of Colorado, and John M. Gottman, Indiana University.

Letters: Pressures for Accountability:

Abstract: In his criticism of higher education's half-hearted efforts to improve the quality of teaching, Popham (Dec. '74) erroneously implies that no programs of substantial size or quality exist. The fact is that a number of serious efforts in this area are being undertaken in many universities. Moreover, a comprehensive teaching improvement program has been established in the state system by the Chancellor's Office of the California State Universities and Colleges and the federal government, through the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Funded at just under $.5 million over a three-year period, the Center for Professional Development will coordinate, guide and evaluate teaching improvement programs on six campuses in the CSUC system. In addition to the Center's funds, each of the six colleges is contributing one full-time faculty position (for the director of the program) and a budget for associates and support services. Each of the six campus programs represents a different approach to teaching improvement. San Jose is focusing on instructional skill development and evaluation of teaching. Northridge has established an Institute for the Advancement of Teaching with released time for participants to address general problems and issues about higher education. Chico is focusing on administrative deelopment as part of a university-wide commitment to professional development and teaching improvement. San Bernardino and Bakersfield are each establishing new programs to assist faculty in the development of effective instructional strategies, and Fresno is undertaking a comprehensive approach that includes a review of its recruitment, tenure and promotion procedures, and reward structure for teaching, as well as faculty and administrative teaching improvement programs. The Center will assess the effects of both the Center itself and the programs on the participating campuses. Each of the six campuses has designed an evaluation plan appropriate to its particular objectives, and each activity of both the Center and each campus program will be evaluated separately and cumulatively. Seven other institutions which submitted proposals to work with the Center but were not funded will also be available for comparison purposes. The point is that a serious commitment has been made to the implementation and evaluation of teaching improvement. Our goal is that the teaching improvement programs become an integral part of each institution. To date, we have institutional commitment and faculty approval. We've only just begun, but we expect to go far in accomplishing the very objectives that Popham recommended.