Rounding in Angoff Ratings

One common modification to the Angoff standard-setting method is to have panelists round their ratings to the nearest 0.05 or 0.10 instead of 0.01. Several reasons have been offered as to why it may make sense to have panelists round their ratings to the nearest 0.05 or 0.10. In this article, we examine one reason that has been suggested, which is that even if panelists are given the opportunity to provide ratings to the nearest 0.01 they often round their ratings to the nearest 0.05 or 0.10 anyway. Using data from four standard settings, we show that in many cases ratings ended in a 0 or 5 when panelists were given the option of using a scale from 0 to 100 in one-point increments and that only about 9% of all ratings ended in a digit other than a 0 or 5. We also examined the impact of different rounding rules and we found that results were quite similar when using different rounding rules. Additional analyses showed the common phenomenon of panelists giving too high of ratings for hard items and too low of ratings for easy items in comparison to conditional p-values. It is suggested that rounding ratings to the nearest 0.05 or 0.10 represent reasonable alternatives to rounding ratings to the nearest 0.01. Accessed 1,050 times on https://pareonline.net from May 02, 2018 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

A Comparison of Subject Matter Experts’ Perceptions and Job Analysis Surveys

Two common approaches for performing job analysis in credentialing programs are committee-based methods, which rely solely on subject matter experts’ judgments, and task inventory surveys. This study evaluates how well subject matter experts’ perceptions coincide with task inventory survey results for three credentialing programs. Results suggest that subject matter expert ratings differ in systematic ways from task inventory survey results and that task lists generated based solely on subject matter experts’ intuitions generally lead to narrower task lists. Results also indicated that there can be key differences for procedures and non-procedures, with subject matter experts’ judgments often tending to exhibit lower agreement levels with task inventory survey results for procedures than for non-procedures. We recommend that organizations performing job analyses think very carefully before relying solely on subject matter experts’ judgments as their primary method of job analysis. Accessed 1,252 times on https://pareonline.net from September 06, 2018 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

A Comparison of Three Conditional Growth Percentile Methods: Student Growth Percentiles, Percentile Rank Residuals, and a Matching Method

This article provides a brief overview and comparison of three conditional growth percentile methods; student growth percentiles, percentile rank residuals, and a nonparametric matching method. These approaches seek to describe student growth in terms of the relative percentile ranking of a student in relationship to students that had the same profile of prior achievement. It is shown that even though the methods come from a similar conceptual foundation, the methods make different assumptions and use different models to estimate growth percentiles. Reading and Mathematics data from a large-scale assessment program are used to compare the growth percentile estimates in a practical setting. Results suggested that the methods often give somewhat similar results. However, the matching method tended to provide somewhat different estimates compared to the other approaches for students that had extreme scores on the prior year test. The implications of these results for large-scale state accountability programs are discussed. Accessed 5,254 times on https://pareonline.net from November 12, 2014 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

A Graphical Transition Table for Communicating Status and Growth

This paper introduces a simple and intuitive graphical display for transition table based accountability models that can be used to communicate information about students’ status and growth simultaneously. This graphical transition table includes the use of shading to convey year to year transitions and different sized letters for performance categories to depict yearly status. Examples based on Michigan’s transition table used on their Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) assessments are provided to illustrate the utility of the graphical transition table in practical contexts. Additional potential applications of the graphical transition table are also suggested. Accessed 5,463 times on https://pareonline.net from June 28, 2011 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

ACC/AHA/ESC guidelines for the management of patients with atrial fibrillation: executive summary: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines and the European Society of Cardiology Committee for Practice Guidelines and Policy Conferences (Committee to Develop Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Atrial Fibrillation)

Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common sustained cardiac rhythm disturbance, is increasing in prevalence as the population ages. Although it is often associated with heart disease, AF occurs in many patients with no detectable disease. Hemodynamic impairment and thromboembolic events result in significant morbidity, mortality, and cost. Accordingly, the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Heart Association (AHA), and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) created a committee of experts to establish guidelines for management of this arrhythmia

ACC/AHA/ESC guidelines for the management of patients with atrial fibrillation: Executive summary. A report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines and the European Society of Cardiology Committee for Practice Guidelines and Policy Conferences (Committee to Develop Guidelines for the Management of Patients with Atrial Fibrillation)

Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common sustained cardiac rhythm disturbance, is increasing in prevalence as the population ages. Although it is often associated with heart disease, AF occurs in many patients with no detectable disease. Hemodynamic impairment and thromboembolic events result in significant morbidity, mortality, and cost. Accordingly, the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Heart Association (AHA), and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) created a committee of experts to establish guidelines for management of this arrhythmia

A MODEST review

We present an account of the state of the art in the fields explored by the research community invested in 'Modeling and Observing DEnse STellar systems'. For this purpose, we take as a basis the activities of the MODEST-17 conference, which was held at Charles University, Prague, in September 2017. Reviewed topics include recent advances in fundamental stellar dynamics, numerical methods for the solution of the gravitational N-body problem, formation and evolution of young and old star clusters and galactic nuclei, their elusive stellar populations, planetary systems, and exotic compact objects, with timely attention to black holes of different classes of mass and their role as sources of gravitational waves. Such a breadth of topics reflects the growing role played by collisional stellar dynamics in numerous areas of modern astrophysics. Indeed, in the next decade, many revolutionary instruments will enable the derivation of positions and velocities of individual stars in the Milky Way and its satellites and will detect signals from a range of astrophysical sources in different portions of the electromagnetic and gravitational spectrum, with an unprecedented sensitivity. On the one hand, this wealth of data will allow us to address a number of long-standing open questions in star cluster studies; on the other hand, many unexpected properties of these systems will come to light, stimulating further progress of our understanding of their formation and evolution.Comment: 42 pages; accepted for publication in 'Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology'. We are much grateful to the organisers of the MODEST-17 conference (Charles University, Prague, September 2017). We acknowledge the input provided by all MODEST-17 participants, and, more generally, by the members of the MODEST communit

Can districts keep good teachers in the schools that need them most?

This study investigates how school demographics and their interactions with policies affect the mobility behaviors of public school teachers with various human capital characteristics. Using data from North Carolina from 1995 to 2006, it finds that teachers' career stage and human capital investments dominate their decisions to leave public school teaching and school demographic characteristics play a dominant role in intra-system sorting. Schools serving at-risk children struggle to attract and retain teachers with desirable observable characteristics. We find evidence to suggest that across-the-board school-based pay-for-performance policies have small but significant associations with mobility decisions and appear to exacerbate inequities in the distribution of teacher qualifications.Teacher labor markets Economics of education