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The purpose of this report is to summarize the key elements of school and district level Performance Index scores (PI scores) for the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) across the United States. PI scores are partial or overall summative ratings of schools or districts currently used across US state accountability systems to assess organizational performance. In this study, we first extracted 14 elements from 49 PI calculation metrics for states in the U.S and conducted a descriptive analysis to provide an overview of which data elements are used across the different calculation metrics for each state and what role PI scores play in state accountability systems. Second, we categorized the fourteen elements into seven categories proposed by the most recent ESSA regulations (81 FR 34539 §200.14-16, 2016) and examined how each state integrated each element in their PI score calculations. Third, we conducted a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis to compare the similarities and differences of PI calculation metrics across the states. The results indicate that there are few commonalities in PI score calculation metrics across the states, as each state has its own methods in addressing the requirements of NCLB and now ESSA. The goal of this report is to inform decisions across states on PI score calculations through summarizing overall ratings and metrics nationally used to hold schools and districts accountable as states move toward implementing the recent Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA) regulations.

Research has shown that there is a gap in educational achievement between socioeconomic and racial groups in the public education system in the United States. This paper identifies the link between resources and academic achievement. Through examining educational resources, from in-school factors, such as facilities and teacher quality, to out-of-school factors, such as family structure, socioeconomic status, and community values, this study serves to evaluate several theories of social capital in the hopes of providing an explanation for why this achievement gap exists. The review of the literature provided an inconsistent view on which factor has the most impact on educational achievement across diverse groups. In turn, this paper explores the possibility that the factors are interrelated and therefore difficult to compare. By outlining an analogy between Jared Diamond's (1999) geographic luck theory from "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and the public education system in the United States, this paper shows the importance of resources to academic achievement and how social capital plays a consequential role in students' performance in school.

The author outlines a unique integral transdisciplinary theory (model, map) for studying four meta-motivations universal to all living systems. Within this theory are four primary principles to make the whole integral basis for understanding motivation and all that it determines in perception, thinking, feelings, actions. The four meta-motivations are Fear, Love, Freedom and Fearlessness. This work continues the author's 25 year study of recalibrating W. societies' views and approaches to curriculum design which are truly emancipatory, rather than continuing a legacy of fear-based curriculum design and pedagogy that is wiping out the best qualities of the Natural, Cultural and Spiritual worlds. The author argues that the foundational meta-motivation (principle) of Fear is an "ecology of fear" essential to the understanding of the Natural world and thus, also, the world of human beings. Any notion of "living in harmony" with the natural world ("a la" Gregory Bateson and many holistic and indigenous educators) ought to engage the role of an ecology of fear. A list of related resources is provided in an appendix. [This paper was published by the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.] (Contains 4 figures and 8 footnotes.)

Digital textbooks will soon be part of every classroom in the United States. This trend accompanies an imperative for schools to facilitate 21st century learning in which educators prepare students to learn and live productively in a global society where accurate and current information is a meaningful part of everyday learning. As technology and the Internet have gained presence in classrooms, instructional materials and activities have become digitally rich. The use of digital textbooks is rapidly gaining ground in education. While colleges and universities have moved headlong into digital textbooks as a means to reduce costs for students, K-12 education is venturing cautiously, but steadily, into using digital textbooks. State laws, many of which have been rewritten to include digital content as an acceptable use of state textbook funding, will serve as catalysts that spur the transition to digital textbooks School librarians can provide school-wide leadership to assist students, teachers, and parent concerns when transitioning to digital textbooks. Working in collaboration with teachers, school librarians promote comprehension through questioning, clarifying, seeking meaning, and discussion. Digital textbooks may represent a way to continue advocacy for the importance of reading as well as for the school librarian's leadership role in technology integration. (Contains 2 tables.) [This report was produced by the Florida State University PALM (Partnerships Advancing Library Media) Center.]

The purpose of this study is to explore aspects and indicators most commonly used to assess the quality of education systems in different countries through the comparison of 12 national publications describing the state of the educational system. To compare indicators the CIPP model was chosen. This model is organized in four main parts: Context, Input, Process and Product. Each main part was then divided into categories based on the research literature (e.g., Input is divided into human, financial and material resources). Based on the CIPP model an electronic database for quality indicators comparison has been designed and implemented. This system is dynamic and easy to update. Using the database it is possible to compare countries according to several criteria (e.g., main parts and categories of the CIPP model, ISCED [International Standard Classification of Education] level, level of data collection). The database is available to the public and is designed for researchers and scholastic decision makers. A first comparison shows that processes at the classroom level are rarely considered, whereas public financial resources as well as achievement results are always included. The study concludes with a discussion of the findings of the comparison, as well as suggestions for future research aimed at further defining relevant indicators for the assessment of education quality." An appendix presents: "The on-line database: structure and functions. (Contains 5 figures and 7 footnotes.) [This paper was produced by INVALSI - National Institute for the Educational Evaluation of Instruction and Training.]

For Americans to engage in a global information society, it is critical that they have access to high-speed, high-bandwidth Internet, meaning broadband. Network connectivity opens up a wealth of possibilities to K-12 educators. While it has the potential to result in fundamental changes in teaching methods, it can definitely be used to enhance already effective teaching methods. However, schools must have confidence in their network infrastructure before network connectivity will be integrated into the classroom. Networks must be reliable and quick; and, if they do not function, as expected and technical support is not readily available, then educators will not use them. Schools face challenges to the integration of broadband in teaching and learning in the areas of access, skills, policy, and motivation. Last mile support is essential and all stakeholders must work together to address the main issues facing the improvement of broadband in schools. A solution to these situations is on-site support to streamline and enable effective use of broadband-enabled technology. For most schools, the school librarian, in their roles as school leaders, can expertly direct this "last mile" implementation by providing the technology coordination, support, and leadership necessary to address access issues from desktop to district. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.) [This report was produced by the Florida State University PALM (Partnerships Advancing Library Media) Center. Support for this paper was provided by Gale Cengage Learning.]

The U.S. Department of Education Chapter of Blacks in Government (BIG) reviewed and responded to the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Office] African American Workgroup Report. The BIG ED Chapter considered whether: There is any evidence indicating that the number and percentage of African Americans employed by any federal government agency is a variable in the barriers described in the Report. Articulated another way, do barriers still exist in agencies with large numbers and percentages of African Americans relative to the total number of employees in an agency? Do barriers exist in those agencies with small numbers and percentages of African Americans? The recommendations were timely and strategic, given: (1) The Obama Administration; and (2) The increasing numbers of other groups of people of color along with the lower number of Blacks employed by some agencies in the federal government. While the Report included unconscious bias as a barrier, the ED Chapter recommendations urge monitoring out and out racial discrimination and subtle forms of intentional racism. Recommendations include tracking and monitoring the furloughs, layoffs and other adverse actions for Black employees in all agencies, given sequestration. An appendix presents: EEOC African American Workgroup Report. (Contains 7 tables, 38 endnotes, and 9 notes.)

Nearly thirty years after the Cold War era commission's report titled "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform," educators and historians must evaluate its relevance and its contribution to the shifting educational paradigm in the United States.

This study compares academic policies related to academic good standing, probation, suspension, and expulsion at nine universities over 17 years providing a benchmark to which others can compare. The print and on-line versions of the undergraduate catalogs from 1988-2005 for each of the nine public universities in the southeastern United States were examined regarding those policies. Each school requires a 2.0 cumulative grade point average for graduation, but students earlier in their careers may remain in good standing with lower CGPAs. Students not in good standing may be put on probation while remaining in school and given a chance to improve their grades. Failing that, they may be suspended with various paths to return. After one or two suspensions, students are expelled, although six institutions have policies allowing them to return after time away. Grade forgiveness policies are also examined. We find that over time those institutions with lower standards for good standing have raised them. This study lays a foundation for a study answering larger questions about how these policies affect enrollment, persistence, and graduation, particularly among women and minority students majoring in engineering at these institutions. (Contains 6 tables and 3 appendices.)

This piece of research project has demonstrated that there is a gap in educational achievement between parents' access to social capital and children's educational outcomes in a global context by examining England, United States and China specifically. Through examining educational resources, from in-school factors, such as facilities, teacher quality and teacher to student ratio, to out-of-school factors, such as family structure, socioeconomic status, and community values. This research paper evaluates several theories of social capital in the hopes of providing an explanation for why this achievement gap exists.The literature review outlines an analogy between Diamond's (1999) geographic luck theory and the education system in a global context. The review of the literature also examines the relationship between parents' access to socioeconomic background and academic performance across diverse backgrounds. This paper shows the importance of all kinds of resources to academic achievement and how social capital plays a consequential role in the students' educational outcomes.

This paper discusses the earliest collegiate academic programs in the United States that offered courses on business. These academic programs differed (1) in size based on the disciplines and the number of courses offered and (2) in name. Regarding the latter, a few academic programs were departments, some were schools, and some were colleges. Several institutions of higher education offered various courses in business, but they did not necessarily establish a department, school, or college of business or commerce until many years later.

Transitioning to and from post-compulsory education often poses problems on students, especially students with disabilities. The fourth Ed-ICT symposium at the FernUniversität in Hagen aimed at discussing new practices, identifying problems and challenges during transition processes, and developing innovative solutions for both individuals and institutions. A variety of experts has been invited to ensure representation among the key stakeholders such as transition specialists, technology specialists, service providers, faculty, researchers and people with disabilities. Together these experts worked on questions like: How can technology help people with disabilities with transitions in the education system? What are typical problems that people with disabilities experience with technology and the accessibility of technology during transitions? Who are the different stakeholders involved, and do we need other or different stakeholders? What role does technology play in the different settings of the education system? This research report documents the contributions and results of the two-day symposium. [Internal research funding was provided by the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany. For the 2017 proceedings, see ED580147.]

Too often student services have become a provider of discrete assistance in which one-way information transactions take place between the staff/student paraprofessionals providers and the students receiving the services. Students attend academic advising appointments, listen during tutorial or small groups study meetings, and read computer screens of information during career exploration sessions. Transactions seldom lead to transformations of engagement, identity, and deep learning for the students who provide or receive the service. Student leaders involved in student services, Students as Partners partnerships, student organizations, and athletics experience unanticipated personal and professional growth. Case studies from Australia, Belgium, Indonesia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States display global connections among common themes of co-curricular learning events from such rich environments. This chapter provides a conceptual model for an ecosystem of leader identity emergence that can be effective in a variety of student activity venues and recommendations to be more intentional in fostering growth. [This paper was published in: H. Juijser, M. Kek, and F. F. Padro (Eds.) (2021). "University Development and Administration. Student Support Services." Springer Nature.]

All over the world, nations have spent much of the last 20 years scrambling to increase and improve access to basic education. Globally, the number of people without access to a basic education has fallen significantly in the years since the goals of Education For All (EFA) were announced in 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, and extended at Incheon, South Korea, in 2016. This is ostensibly very good news. While universal access to a basic education is certainly a worthy goal, one can raise significant questions about the orientation of these efforts and the manner in which they are being pursued. For example, very little attention seems to have been paid to what the schools are or will be like, or to how the nations and people they must serve may be different from those for whom they were designed. To understand the inevitable problems that flow from this potential mismatch, it is useful to examine education in nations that have achieved more or less universal access to basic education. Many of the educational, social, economic, and social justice disparities that plague those nations are today understood as natural effects of the educational infrastructures in operation. Examination of recent empirical research and practice that attends to the importance of social and cultural factors in education may allow nations that are currently building or scaling up access to head off some predictable and difficult problems before they become endemic and calcified on a national scale. Nations who seize the opportunity to build asset-based and culturally responsive pedagogies into their educational systems early on may, in time, provide the rest of the world with much needed leadership on these issues. [This paper was published in "Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Education."]

Due to changes from centralization to marketization, Taiwan's university governance must increase its effectiveness. The purpose of this paper was to introduce trends in and issues of Taiwan's university governance, describe university governance in the United States, and draw implications that Taiwan's university governance needs to learn from the United States. Literature review was employed to reach the purposes. It is found that Taiwan's university governance is struggling in heading for the balance of democracy and efficiency although most colleges and universities in Taiwan adopt the model of bicameral governance which is very prevalent in the United States. In order to solve this issue, Taiwan's university governance system needs to learn the following structure of bicameral governance which is popular in the United States and stated by Eileen Hogan: (1) a governing board which is responsible for the administrative and financial elements of the university, and (2) an academic senate or a university council with responsibility for academic matters of an educational/academic nature. In order to do so, Taiwan's university governance needs more communications and a legislative change. [This paper was published in the proceedings of the International Presidential Forum (pp. 179-187), Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, June 6.]

This paper examines the role of teachers in the implementation of citizenship education in Colombia. Consistent with its highly-decentralized school system, Colombia's National Program of Citizenship Competencies was developed with the participation of many local, national, and international partners. Among the most involved and most critical participants were the primary implementers of the reform: teachers. Teacher training is important to student achievement, but in a context that also seeks to teach democratic citizenship, training must be attentive to reciprocal learning and shared leadership. This paper highlights the impact of teacher training in one rural department and how a cross-cultural collaboration between Colombian and US-based educators benefited practitioners on both sides. Four key lessons on the design and delivery of professional development on citizenship education (and more broadly) are offered for educators and policymakers: the use of democratic pedagogy; the promotion and extension of teachers' self-awareness; the cross-pollination of perspectives across all levels; and a humble and inclusive expertise. (Contains 1 figure and 10 footnotes.)

U.S. teacher educators are faced with serious challenges to demonstrate the quality of the graduates they prepare. These challenges are expressed in the country's fixation on accountability and testing. We are witnessing the growth of standardized tests and alternative routes to certification as panaceas intended to solve the teacher shortage crisis in most states. National accreditation and state program approval agencies are attempting to stem the tide through the ever-increasing demand for standards-based assessment data documenting teacher quality. The common set of standards used nationally for accreditation was developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and promulgated by the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) in the form of ten principles. Each of the principles includes indicators written at the knowledge, skill, and dispositional levels, forming constructs that colleges are required to measure. Sadly, neither the profession nor the accreditors have realized the need for objective measurement. This is largely a function of what Stiggins bemoans as assessment illiteracy (2000). They are satisfied, at best, with ordinal scales for poorly constructed criteria on ill-defined tasks, or, at worst, with counting papers in portfolios constructed without regard to any form of psychometric consideration (Wilkerson and Lang, 2003). In this paper, however, the focus was on assessment of dispositions. (Contains 5 tables and 6 figures.)

The paper deals with the facts obtained from TIMSS 2003 (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). This international comparative study, which includes 47 participant countries worldwide, explores dependence between eighth grade students' achievement in the areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and geography, and basic characteristics of context for teaching and learning in school and at home. In the sense, different options of using modern technology equipment and its influence to students' achievement are explored in the TIMSS 2003 assessment. The main topic of the paper is using computers and calculators in teaching and its implications to students' overall achievement at the end of primary school education. The TIMSS 2003 international overall results in this area show that using computers in teaching doesn't significantly contribute to better students' achievement in the field of mathematics and also show some level of significant influence on students' achievement in the field of science. Moreover, the results show that using calculators in mathematics teaching improve overall students' achievement. Connectedness between using computers/calculators and students' achievement is especially explored and presented in the frame of students' sample in four countries, the United States, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Serbia. (Contains 12 tables.) [This article is a result of the project "Education for Knowledge-Based Society" No. 149001 (2006-2010), financially supported by the Ministry for Science and Environmental Protection, Republic of Serbia. This article was also published in: The Fourth International Conference on Informatics, Educational Technology and New Media in Education: Proceedings (253-263). Sombor (Serbia): Faculty of Education.]

The study of college choice and persistence enjoys a lengthy history. However, many of the prominent models upon which the majority of research in these fields is based arise from studies involving traditional 18- to 22-year-old residential students. This paper investigates the rapidly-evolving student population and formulates a new model for college choice and persistence that takes into account the changing demographics and enrollment patterns of postsecondary students in the United States. In addition to proposing a general framework for understanding the choice and persistence decision process, the paper sets forth a series of decision vectors, or critical factors, that influence each major decision in the process. Suggestions for further study and implications for postsecondary faculty, staff, administrators, and policymakers are also explored. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of a classroom event in which fourth and fifth grade students in a highly diverse urban school interpreted, discussed and responded to a district survey intended to illuminate the social climate of the city's schools, with a particular focus on race and racism. We drew on the three-dimensional critical discourse analysis methodology articulated by Fairclough (1989; 1995). Accordingly, we conducted three analyses of data related to this classroom event that were mapped on to one another. First, we analyzed the language of both the classroom discussions and the district survey. This analysis included examining turn-taking, use of metaphor in both spoken and written texts, terms/phrases used to articulate race, difference, fairness, and privacy, and generic structures in the survey. Second, we analyzed the content of the survey itself and the explanatory information from the district that accompanied it to examine its process of production and dissemination and the motivations of the district in engaging in that process. This level of analysis also involved examining how the language of the survey led it to be consumed in a particular way by this group of children. Third, we analyzed the sociocultural context surrounding this event, particularly the discussions of race that had occurred prior to this event, the role of individual children in this event, and the role of this particular classroom context. This data was drawn from the second year of a two-year classroom-based study of children's experiences across literacy and mathematics in a fourth/fifth grade urban classroom. The 23 participants included Native American, African American, white, Latino and Asian American children, many of whom were first generation immigrants to the United States. Our paper explicates several findings, including: 1) the survey led students to question static racial categories and, thus, introduced new frameworks for considering the cssroom; 2) competing discourses in survey positioned children and teachers in complex ways and led to resistant and defensive stances and missed opportunities; 3) districts need to consider the process, form and language they employ when their intent is to learn from children about such sensitive, and crucially important, issues. This analysis has implications for how districts can more effectively gather important information about racial climate in schools and how teachers can support students to engage issues of race in elementary classrooms. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

The United States Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is 30 years of age. IDEA affords individuals with physical or cognitive disabilities (through age 21) a free appropriate public education, an individualized education plan, and many accommodations in an attempt to include those with disabilities in the educational experience. Throughout its brief history, the party in power has, through amendment of the law, presidential action or inaction, or litigation opened the door to those with disabilities in some cases and supported de facto exclusion in others. This paper displays a timeline tracing the effects of the legislation, in its various forms, on the disabled populace. All manifestations of the law will were examined: from its origin during the Ford administration; amendments in the George Herbert Walker Bush and Clinton administrations, to reauthorization under the current government. Corresponding litigation brought by advocates and opponents was dissected as to its effects on education access for those with disabilities. Additionally, the effects of educational reform on students with disabilities are examined by discussion of the controversial "No Child Left Behind" law. Finally, the paper discusses the 2004 election results and its probable implications on the future of disability education legislation.

Looking back upon the centuries one would suspect that in earlier ages universities of medieval France and Italy were very different from the multiplicity of organizational and institutional forms of higher education institutions in modern times, and yet one would be surprised how much these old "universitas" and modern universities have in common. One of the common features may be corruption and academic misconduct that can often bee seen in universities. The increasing scale and scope of corruption in higher education in the former Soviet Bloc as well as numerous other countries urges a better understanding of the problem within the context of socio-economic transformations. Corruption in higher education is deeply rooted in the organizational structure of each higher education institution. Corruption has a long history and a proud tradition. Corruption in higher education is an organic part of corruption overall, with its culture, traditions, functions, and mechanisms. The goal of this paper is to present a description of modern day higher education corruption from a historical perspective. This paper is based on the techniques of positive analysis along with some elements of comparative analysis, and withstands from normative or moral judgments. A well-structured description of higher education corruption in a historical context is helpful in developing strategies for its eradication or prevention. This paper first presents the concept of corruption as a historical category and then analyzes corrupt legacies at the stages of admission, teaching and learning, and graduation. It also addresses issues of funding, discrimination against foreign nationals, publishing, and state-university relations. The genesis of forms of corruption and the determination of corruption as such is understood in a changing historical context.

In recent years educators and educational researchers in the U.S. have begun to introduce engineering design activities in secondary science classrooms for the purpose of scaffolding science learning as well as supporting such general problem-solving skills as decision making and working in teams. However, such curricula risk perpetuating a misconception about the nature of engineering design, or technology more broadly, as being applied science, when in fact its nature is more complex and its relationship with science is reciprocal. Developing an understanding of technology itself is a major part of national science education standards. Based in situative and cognitive theories, this paper critiques assumptions of engineering design activities in science classrooms from the perspective of their alignment with an epistemology of professional engineering design. Analyzing alignment of professional and classroom practices will require thick descriptions of both realms. This paper contributes to such an analysis, drawing on philosophical and sociological accounts of engineering practice to develop a prototypical epistemology of engineering design to which classroom practice may be compared, or that may be considered in developing future classroom engineering design activities. (Contains 1 footnote.)

This paper is intended to contribute to the general literature on international teacher exchange in citizenship education. This paper was presented at the 48th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society on March 11, 2004 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Methodology) The author reports on the content and evaluation of two parts of a year long citizenship education exchange program. The first part reviews the development, implementation, and assessment of a teacher exchange program on citizenship education held at Eastern Kentucky University for seven East Ukrainian teachers. The second part reviews and evaluates a Citizenship Education Summer Institute which the participants presented to their fellow teachers in Ukraine. (Results) Each of the activities and programs in the citizenship education seminar were evaluated by participants, mentors, and host families respectively. Data on the effectiveness of program activities, processes, and events were collected from responses to Likert scale surveys and anecdotal comments. The results are provided in attachments. The Ukrainians were generally positive about their learning experiences in the United States. Their Ukrainian colleagues found the content of what they learned in the Summer Institute very useful. (Conclusions) International teacher exchanges provide opportunities for relevant reciprocal teacher professional development, and the adaptation of "best practices" from lessons learned. (Recommendations) Continued funding of international teacher exchanges on citizenship education is needed because they mutually benefit teachers and students from both sides. (Contains 3 figures.)

This paper considers some themes that I have discussed before at this seminar in previous years, namely the different perceptions of the best ways to teach chemistry in the nineteenth and early twentieth century between British and American chemists. In this paper I will examine the biographies of a number of nineteenth century British and American chemical textbook writers and see what, if any differences stand out in the chemical pedagogies that they expressed in the textbooks that they wrote. A conclusion is reached that by the early twentieth century there were increasing numbers of American scientists in the top rank. Although some of these were refugees, many scientists were born in America and schooled using the science textbooks, which have been referred to in this paper. These scientists and inventors provided the intellectual base on which the American economy was able to expand and overtake the economies of European countries during the twentieth century.

The paradigm of human resource development has shifted to workplace learning and performance. Workplace can be an organization, an office, a kitchen, a shop, a farm, a website, even a home. Workplace learning is a dynamic process to solve workplace problems through learning. An identification of global trends of workplace learning can help us to better connect with workplace learning stakeholders. Using a comprehensive search of 43 contemporary journal, magazine and newspaper articles, this paper reviews and synthesizes global trends in workplace learning in terms of the following five aspects: people/who, approach/how, time/when, place/where and thing/what. Consequently, five main trends are identified as follows: (1) Types of participants and facilitators are diversifying; (2) Emerging approach focus is practice-based systemic learning; (3) The flexibility of learning time has been increasing; (4) Learning by working and learning through systematic instruction at the workplace have been highly appraised; and (5) Workplace learning culture as well as practitioner's active engagement and motivation to learn have become key elements.

At the 2009 meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education's Council on Public Policy in Higher Education, Pat Callan, President of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, asserted that Master's Colleges and Universities (MCUs) are the most understudied sector of American higher education. This paper described how the 265 public MCUs, which in 2006-7 served 2.5 million students, are for the first time geographically classified in a manner consistent with the 2005 Basic Classification of Associate's Colleges published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Carnegie's 2005 edition, the first to classify Associate's Colleges, created urban, suburban, and rural sub-classifications that reflect the importance of place in the assignment by states of community college service delivery areas. The proposed public MCU classification is applied using National Center for Education Statistics data on enrollments, institutions, and student financial aid. This is followed by a brief discussion on the use of this geographically-based classification of public MCUs to bring greater precision to postsecondary research, policy, and practice. (Contains 6 tables and 1 footnote.)

The purpose of creating a developmental (i.e., vertical) score scale is to make it possible to compare students in terms of differences in magnitude. In other words, the scale should have interval properties. When this has been accomplished one can claim to measure growth in a sense that is both coherent and meaningful. In this paper I argue that the practice of creating and maintaining developmental scales for large-scale assessment systems in the United States is at odds with this purpose, and that this is due to confusion over the theoretical rationale under which item response theory calibration leads to scales with interval properties. The problem seems to stem from a conflict in the philosophical underpinnings of what it means (and what it requires) to support the claim that one has measured a latent construct, an issue that has been brought to light by the recent work of Joel Michell and Denny Borsboom. Using data drawn from 14 states with established developmental scales for math and reading, I illustrate the equivocal nature of aggregate growth interpretations when one follows the implicit premise that--despite claims to the contrary--developmental scales communicate only ordinal information. (Contains 1 table, 5 figures and 0 footnotes.)