Education Commons^™

Improvements For Differential Functioning Of Items And Tests (Dfit): Investigating The Addition Of Reporting An Effect Size Measure And Power, Keith D. Wright

Educational Policy Studies Dissertations

Standardized testing has been part of the American educational system for decades. Controversy from the beginning has plagued standardized testing, is plaguing testing today, and will continue to be controversial. Given the current federal educational policies supporting increased standardized testing, psychometricians, educators and policy makers must seek ways to ensure that tests are not biased towards one group over another.

In measurement theory, if a test item behaves differently for two different groups of examinees, this test item is considered a differential functioning test item (DIF). Differential item functioning, often conceptualized in the context of item response theory (IRT) is …

To See And Be Seen: Exploring Layers Of Instructional Leadership And Supervision In The Enactment Of A District-Wide Teacher Evaluation Reform, Jenifer E. Neale

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes instructional leadership and evaluation protocols from a large, diverse district in the Southeastern United States in order to investigate layers of accountability and tensions created when principals are asked to fill the dual roles of both instructional leader and supervisor in a newly implemented teacher evaluation system reform. For this dissertation I investigate the role of the principal as a colleague and mentor and compare this with the role of the principal as supervisor and evaluator in hierarchical systems. I include the role of the peer evaluator, a new position, in my analysis. Critical discourse analysis is …