Balancing Local Assessment and Statewide Testing: Building a Program that Meets Student Needs

This document discusses the components of assessment for those who are considering adding local assessments to required statewide testing of K-12 students. These components include technical adequacy, local-level opportunity, and how to link to state and local standards. Attributes of a model local assessment program are discussed and examples are given. There are also four key questions evaluators and teachers should ask themselves if they are considering a local-level assessment, including the cost feasibility. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Selection criteria and psychological adaptations to the ongoing dialysis and renal transplant programme

The aims of the study were: - (1) to investigate the criteria of selection for an ongoing dialysis and transplant programme; and (2) to study psychological changes made by patients at various phases of the programme. A total sample of forty-five patients being treated at the Renal Department of Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, were psychologically assessed. In studying the selection process, intellectual factors, social class, educational measures and personality factors were contrasted between a sample of patients accepted and rejected for the programme. In the investigation of the psychological changes occurring within the programme, total and directional hostility, intelligence, anxiety, dependency and self-control measures were contrasted between a predialysis, short-term dialysis, long-term dialysis and transplant sample. Results revealed!( 1) that the accepted sample had significantly higher verbal intelligence, educational and social class scores than the rejected group; (2) no significant differences in general hostility, anxiety, dependency and self-control measures between the patients at the various ongoing phases. However the long-term dialysis sample showed significantly more extra-punitiveness than the transplant sample while the transplant sample showed a significantly higher level of intellectual functioning than the predialysis and long-term dialysis groups. These results show that (1) selection is possibly based on superficial characteristics, with which the selection team can identify; (2) projection of hostility is a possible important defence mechanism used in coping with the rigorous demands of the programme; (3) due to the possible absence of toxic substances after transplantation, the transplant sample showed a higher level of intellectual functioning. Other possible explanations for the findings were provided

Inequalities For Distances Between Triangle Centers

In his seminal paper on triangle centers, Clark Kimberling made a number of conjectures concerning the distances between triangle centers. For example, if $D(i; j)$ denotes the distance between triangle centers $X_i$ and $X_j$ , Kimberling conjectured that $D(6; 1) \leq D(6; 3)$ for all triangles. We use symbolic mathematics techniques to prove these conjectures. In addition, we prove stronger results, using best-possible constants, such as $D(6; 1) \leq (2 -\sqrt3)D(6; 3)$

The move to NAPLAN online: The advantages and the road ahead

The task of developing and delivering the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) online presents enormous challenges. Nonetheless, the benefits of taking this on are well worth the efforts. With a tailored test design, NAPLAN online will provide a better measure of the Australian Curriculum, more precise results and a significantly faster turnaround of those results. NAPLAN will begin its delivery online in 2017, with an opt-in period until 2019. To ensure readiness, a large amount of research is being conducted through the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to inform the development process. This presentation will address the advantages of moving online, as well as outline several key research studies to be conducted prior to the test’s implementation, including:• a trialling study to ensure all item types (traditional and innovative) work in the online environment• a device-effect study to ensure no disadvantageto students regardless of whether they use laptops or tablets• a fonts and readability study, to ensure the best layout for reading test (passages and items)• an accessibility study to ensure the test is fair for all students, including students with disabilities, students in remote areas, and so on• an autoscoring study, to demonstrate that computers can score NAPLAN writing as well as teachers

Properties of Ajima Circles

We study properties of certain circles associated with a triangle. Each circle is inside the triangle, tangent to two sides of the triangle, and externally tangent to the arc of a circle erected internally on the third side

A Triad of Circles Associated with a Triangle

We study some properties of a triad of circles associated with a triangle. Each circle is inside the triangle, tangent to two sides of the triangle, and externally tangent to the circle on the third side as diameter. In particular, we find a nice relation involving the radii of the inner and outer Apollonius circles of the three circles in the triad.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2310.1289

Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak

"Epic and the Russian Novel from Gogol to Pasternak examines the origin of the nineteen- century Russian novel and challenges the Lukács-Bakhtin theory of epic. By removing the Russian novel from its European context, the authors reveal that it developed as a means of reconnecting the narrative form with its origins in classical and Christian epic in a way that expressed the Russian desire to renew and restore ancient spirituality. Through this methodology, Griffiths and Rabinowitz dispute Bakhtin’s classification of epic as a monophonic and dead genre whose time has passed. Due to its grand themes and cultural centrality, the epic is the form most suited to newcomers or cultural outsiders seeking legitimacy through appropriation of the past. Through readings of Gogol’s Dead Souls—a uniquely problematic work, and one which Bakhtin argued was novelistic rather than epic—Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace, this book redefines “epic”

The Quark/Antiquark Asymmetry of the Nucleon Sea

Although the distributions of sea quarks and antiquarks generated by leading-twist QCD evolution through gluon splitting $g \rightarrow \bar q q$ are necessarily CP symmetric, the distributions of nonvalence quarks and antiquarks which are intrinsic to the nucleon's bound state wavefunction need not be identical. In this paper we investigate the sea quark/antiquark asymmetries in the nucleon wavefunction which are generated by a light-cone model of energetically-favored meson-baryon fluctuations. The model predicts striking quark/antiquark asymmetries in the momentum and helicity distributions for the down and strange contributions to the proton structure function: the intrinsic $d$ and $s$ quarks in the proton sea are predicted to be negatively polarized, whereas the intrinsic $\bar d$ and $\bar s$ antiquarks give zero contributions to the proton spin. Such a picture is supported by experimental phenomena related to the proton spin problem and the violation of the Ellis-Jaffe sum rule. The light-cone meson-baryon fluctuation model also suggests a structured momentum distribution asymmetry for strange quarks and antiquarks which could be relevant to an outstanding conflict between two different determinations of the strange quark sea in the nucleon. The model predicts an excess of intrinsic $d \bar d$ pairs over $u \bar u$ pairs, as supported by the Gottfried sum rule violation. We also predict that the intrinsic charm and anticharm helicity and momentum distributions are not identical.Comment: LaTex 18 pages, 4 figures. To obtain a copy, send e-mail to [email protected]

Asymmetric Quark/Antiquark Hadronization in e+e- Annihilation

We point out that the fragmentation of a strange quark into nucleons versus antinucleons is not necessarily identical $D_{p/s}(z,Q^2) \neq D_{\bar p/s}(z,Q^2)$, even though the perturbative contributions from gluon splitting and evolution are $p \leftrightarrow \bar p$ symmetric. The observation of such asymmetries in the hadronization of strange and other heavy quarks can provide insight into the nonperturbative mechanisms underlying jet fragmentation in QCD.Comment: Latex, 12 page

Risk of Parkinson disease in carriers of parkin mutations : estimation using the kin-cohort method

Objective: To estimate the risk of Parkinson disease (PD) in individuals with mutations in the Parkin gene. Design: We assessed point mutations and exon deletions and duplications in the Parkin gene in 247 probands with PD (age at onset 50 years) and 104 control probands enrolled in the Genetic Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease (GEPD) study. For each first-degree relative, a consensus diagnosis of PD was established. The probability that each relative carried a mutation was estimated from the proband's Parkin carrier status using Mendelian principles and from the relationship of the relative to the proband. Setting: Tertiary care movement disorders center. Patients: Cases, controls, and their first-degree relatives were enrolled in the GEPD study. Main Outcome Measures: Estimated age-specific penetrance in first-degree relatives. Results: Parkin mutations were identified in 25 probands with PD (10.1%), 18 (72.0%) of whom were heterozygotes. One Parkin homozygote was reported in 2 siblings with PD. The cumulative incidence of PD to age 65 years in carrier relatives (age-specific penetrance) was estimated to be 7.0% (95% confidence interval, 0.4%-71.9%), compared with 1.7% (95% confidence interval, 0.8%-3.4%) in noncarrier relatives of the cases (P = .59) and 1.1% (95% confidence interval, 0.3%-3.4%) in relatives of the controls (compared with noncarrier relatives, P = .52). Conclusions: The cumulative risk of PD to age 65 years in a noncarrier relative of a case with an age at onset of 50 years or younger is not significantly greater than the general population risk among controls. Age-specific penetrance among Parkin carriers, in particular heterozygotes, deserves further study. Mutations in the Parkin gene (PARK2; GenBank AB009973) are associated primarily with early-onset Parkinson disease (PD), defined as age at onset (AAO) ranging from 45 years or younger to 55 years or younger, but have also been described in PD cases with an AAO older than 70 years. In PD cases with an AAO of 45 years or younger with a mode of inheritance consistent with autosomal recessive transmission, the frequency of Parkin mutations may be as high as 49%, whereas in cases without a family history of PD the range is 15% to 18%. Age at onset is inversely correlated with the frequency of Parkin mutations in both familial and sporadic cases. Several studies have compared the AAO of PD in heterozygous, compound heterozygous, and homozygous Parkin mutation carriers and found that heterozygous cases, both familial and sporadic, have an older AAO. Heterozygous Parkin mutation carriers are more frequently reported among sporadic than familial cases. Information on the risk of PD in individuals who carry Parkin mutations in either the homozygous, compound heterozygous, or heterozygous state (or penetrance) is essential for genetic counseling. The penetrance of Parkin mutations has only been reported for isolated families. Most of the previous study designs sampled PD cases based on family history of PD, which would bias penetrance estimates upwards. To obtain an unbiased estimate of risk, a population-based random sample would be desirable, but Parkin mutations are so rare in the population that such a sample would have to be extremely large to obtain sufficient precision in penetrance estimates. To obtain unbiased estimates of the risk of PD in Parkin carriers despite the low population frequency of Parkin mutations, we used a kin-cohort study design applied to participants in the Genetic Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease (GEPD) study. The kin-cohort design is highly efficient for estimating penetrance because the relatives' mutation status is not required for the analyses, thus reducing costs for genetic analysis