Education concepts and applications

¶ … reduced without adversely affecting the case for significance?

There is a tremendous amount of background material that is presented in the introduction of the article. While it is certainly relevant to the intentions of the authors the several paragraphs used could certainly be edited down to a more concise single paragraph which would convey the facts and give alternate references to retrieve further information should the reader wish to do so. Furthermore there is a great deal of discussion in the introduction regarding the current history of assessments without really inferring direct or indirect relevance to the issue. While interesting and perhaps relevant, it could have been moitted for the case of brevity.

Which of the sources cited would be considered directly related to the purpose of the study, and which would be considered background or context?

While the focus of this article was the impact of alternate assessments, there were necessary background information relating to students with disabilities as well as other testing methods present. In general the sources that relates to assessments, student portfolios and student learning would directly relate to the survey assessments. Whereas, the material related to students with disabilities such as the IDEA, and the Kentucky reports, while germane to the topic are essentially background material.

3. What is an example of a specific research question that would be appropriate for the study?

Do alternate assessments add value to the students overall outcome without unduly burdening teachers with extra reporting?

4. What type of sampling is represented? Is this a random sample? Is a sample potentially so biased that the results are not helpful?

It is a selected sample as follows and is certainly not random. These surveys were ent to 508 teachers who had attended one of the required scoring training in the '95-'96 school year or the '96-'98 school tear

Certain bias may exist since this selection is predisposed to favoring these assessments in the first place. This may color their judgment I regards to any negative assertions. However, it must be remembered that as teachers their bias should always be towards the student, which in this case will be a positive impact on results.

5. How could validity and reliability be established for this kind of survey?

Certainly an alternate control group could be established with a random selection of teachers who are outside of the criteria used for this survey. This would help to further understand and deviance between norms and establish more validity and reliability for the final outcome. Number and blind referencing would have also added some validity to the results

6. What could the authors do, if anything, with the percentages presented to make a stronger case for practical significance?

One technique for creating a more forceful percentage would be o take the overall total from responses 5, 4 and 3 and list that percentage as the overall positive response to the questions.

7. What kind of graphic could be used to present the results?

A simple bar chart per question would be an excellent visual choice and then a pie chart represent the average of a 7 questions would help to give the overall impression of the survey. These would also lend themselves to a more communicative PowerPoint presentation.