Individual Student Data Research Articles

The response in response to intervention: Evaluating the utility of assessing maintenance of intervention effects

Extensive evidence exists demonstrating the utility of Curriculum-Based Measurement in reading (R-CBM) for progress-monitoring purposes; however, most studies have evaluated R-CBM from a traditional psychometric perspective, which allows for variability in individual student's data that is not a function of increased skills (i.e., measurement error) to be ignored. Although measurement error can be ignored when the level of interest is at the group level, it is difficult to ignore at the individual-child level when evaluating intervention effectiveness. To account for measurement error, it is recommended that R-CBM data be collected twice weekly for 10 weeks before making decisions regarding intervention effectiveness. Waiting 10 weeks to learn that an intervention is ineffective is troublesome. The current study explores maintenance of intervention effects as a supplemental procedure to R-CBM progress-monitoring procedures. Data from 4 students suggest that maintenance data might be valuable in the early termination of ineffective interventions. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 713–725, 2006.

Nurse Practitioner Student Prescriptive Patterns

As employment of nurse practitioners (NPs) increases in health care systems, there is a need to have current data on their prescribing practices and patterns, and to implement a system for updating such data. This study reports prescriptive data based upon 10,421 primary care visits conducted by 55 family NP students over a 15-month period in 1997 and 1998. Numbers of over-the-counter drugs taken regularly, prescription drugs currently prescribed and prescription drugs prescribed or refilled at the visit were recorded in addition to types of drugs, compliance issues, diagnoses rendered and sociodemographic information. Individual student data were aggregated and analyzed using Epi Info (Epidemiology Program Office of the Centers for Disease Control) and SPSS-PC. Results identified that: 1) the majority of patient visits involved the prescription of 1-2 drugs (88%); 2) major compliance issues included financial concerns, knowledge deficits, and complexity/demands of treatment; 3) commonly rendered diagnoses at drug visits for chronic conditions were hypertension and diabetes; for acute conditions, otitis sinusitis and upper respiratory infections; 4) anti-microbial agents, drugs used for relief of pain, and cardiovascular drugs account for 60% of drug mentions; and 5) the numbers of drugs prescribed or refilled at visits were similar by type of preceptor, except fewer single drugs were prescribed or refilled at visits supervised by nurse preceptors. Findings are discussed relative to deepening the understanding of advanced practice nursing education and the prescribing practices of NP students and their preceptors.

Using Examination Results as Indicators of School and College Performance

SUMMARY A current requirement for secondary schools in England and Wales, associated with the socalled 'Parents' Charter', is that each school is required to publish its average General Certificate of Secondary Education examination results. Every institution with A-level General Certificate of Education candidates is also required to do this. Additionally, the government arranges every autumn for a national 'league table' of all these results to be published in the national press. A principal official justification for this policy is that it will help parents to choose schools for their children on the basis of how well the school is seen to be performing. The paper argues that institutional comparisons based on average, unadjusted, examination results are inadequate and potentially misleading for several reasons. Aggregate data obscure important information; the failure to take account of prior achievement leads to inaccurate and misleading inferences about school differences and they are always out of date because they refer to a cohort who began attending the institutions several years earlier. An alternative 'value-added' analysis of A-level results will be presented based on individual student data and adjusted for intake achievement. The results illustrate the inadequacies of the current procedure but they also demonstrate that any attempts to use examination results to judge the comparative 'effectiveness' of schools and other educational institutions have inherent problems which severely limit the usefulness of such a system for accountability. These results suggest the possibility that better uses for value-added comparisons are as screening instruments to identify institutions for further investigation.

Teacher Unions and the Productivity of Public Schools

Do teacher unions affect the productivity of public schools? The authors examine this question using individual student data from the Sustaining Effects Survey sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Holding resources constant and using achievement gains on standardized tests as the measure of output, they find that union districts are seven percent more productive for average students. For the minority of students who are significantly above or below average, however, nonunion districts are more productive by about the same margin, apparently because teacher unions reduce the use of specialized instructional techniques. This result is consistent with the view that unions tend to standardize the workplace. Across all students, the average union productivity advantage is three percent.

The study of classroom contexts and practices

This process-product study identified classroom contexts and teaching practices related to the mathematics achievement and enjoyment of Year 5 students in Australia. Seventy-five classes were observed 8–10 times during a term with a low-inference observation schedule. Other student and teacher background data were collected with questionnaires. Individual student data were aggregated, and the class was used as the unit of analysis. Classroom context and teaching-practice variables significantly related (at the 0.05 level) to either achievement or enjoyment were identified. For each outcome, a causal model of teaching was developed and tested using multiple linear regression and path analyses. The more effective teachers more frequently presented to large groups, engaged in small-group work incorporating teacher and peer tutoring, provided opportunities for individual practice which they actively monitored, and marked homework assignments which they varied to meet student needs.

EDUCATIONAL EQUITY AND THE FISCAL INCIDENCE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

In recent years the question of educational equity has been answered often by looking at the distribution of public education expenditures or benefits. Here educational equity is explored in a fiscal incidence sense. Individual student data have been developed for both public education benefits (expenditures) and costs (taxes paid) for a sample of senior high school students. The fiscal incidence analysis is limited to a specific age-cohort of families, i.e., families with senior high school students, thus avoiding the problem inherent in fiscal equity analysis due to the life cycle occurrence of some current public expenditures. The results indicate a redistributive pattern which is pro-poor, problack (for high income blacks), and promale. The results also suggest that conclusions about educational equity may vary for the same location depending upon whether an equal distribution of expenditure or a fiscal incidence criterion is used.