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Differential Item Functioning Among English Language Learners On A Large-Scale Mathematics Assessment, Ruixue Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

English language learner (ELL) is a term to describe students who are still acquiring English proficiency. In recent decades, ELLs are a very rapidly growing student group in United States. In school classrooms, ELLs are learning English and their academic subjects simultaneously. It is challenging for them to hear lectures, read textbooks, and complete tests in English despite of their inadequate English language proficiency (Ilich, 2013). As a result, the increasing number of ELLs in public schools has paralleled the increase in ELLs’ low mathematics performance (NCES, 2016).

Due to the popularization of international large-scale assessments in the recent decade, …

Validation Of A School Climate Instrument Using A Rasch Rating Scale Model, Audrey Conway Roberts

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

A new ESSA indicator of school quality and student success provides flexibility to broaden a states’ definition of school and student success. Educational research has found school success is in part determined by a school’s climate and should be considered in improvement/reform strategies (Cohen et al., 2009; Thapa et al., 2013). Yet, school climate research is often difficult and time consuming, and employs a variety of conflicting definitions and dimensions, instruments, and empirical approaches to determining school climate. Given these significant limitations with current measures, the purpose of this study was to validate an instrument measuring school climate based on …