A Meta-Analysis of Testing Accommodations for Students with Disabilities: Implications for High-Stakes Testing

Test accommodations are designed to ensure the comparability of test scores between students and their typically developing counterparts by eliminating as much construct-irrelevant variance and construct-irrelevant difficulty as possible. Although those involved in test creation endeavor to create tests with suitable accommodations for students with disabilities, there is lack of consensus regarding accommodation efficacy. Using meta-analysis and meta-regression to summarize previous research, this study examined whether test accommodations differentially boost test scores of students with disabilities, and whether accommodated conditions provided a more effective and valid assessment of students with disabilities. Results from the meta-analysis of 34 studies (119 effect sizes) lend support to the differential boost hypotheses, whereby students with disabilities (mean effect size = 0.30, k = 62, p \u3c 0.001) are positively impacted by test accommodations while their typically developing peers (mean effect size = 0.17, k = 57, p \u3c 0.001) gain little from test accommodations. Presentation assessment accommodations (mean effect size = 0.22, k = 41, p \u3c 0.001) had a small statistically significant impact on the performance of students with disabilities, while use of timing/scheduling accommodations (mean effect size = 0.47, k = 17, p \u3c 0.001) had a small, bordering on medium, statistically significant impact on these students. The effect for presentation accommodations intensified when narrowing the focus to students with learning disabilities (mean effect size = 0.36, k = 23, p \u3c 0.001) but not for timing/scheduling accommodations (mean effect size = 0.48, k = 13, p \u3c 0.001). Overall results for setting (k = 1) and response (k = 3) accommodations were not available as there were too few studies for an overall comparison. The results of meta-regression analyses examining the effects of assessment accommodations on test scores for students with disabilities showed that 42% of the heterogeneity in test score could be explained by an overall model examining population description, test characteristic, results dissemination, and researcher-manipulated (test accommodation effect size for students with disabilities) variables. Population description and test characteristic variable sets explained the greatest amounts of variability for mean increase in test score, R2=0.22 and R2 =0.35 respectively; researcher-manipulated variable (test accommodation) and research dissemination explained little variance, R2 =0.07 and R2 =0.01, respectively

Job stress among public service employees

This study examined the pravalence of job-related stress among public service employees. Previous research has shown that those professions dealing with the public often induce the highest stress levels due to organizational structure, long hours, and varying shifts. A survey was distributed to convenience sample comprised of individuals attending classes at California State University, San Bernardino, law enforcement dispatchers, fire department dispatchers, medical professionals as well as transportation agency personnel

Unraveling the complex dynamics of acoustofluidics

We describe a novel mathematical formalism for analysis and modeling of these acoustofluidic systems. The framework provides the user greater generality than classical methods through articulation and direct exploitation of spatiotemporal scale disparities present between the acoustics and remaining dynamics via multiscale differential operations. This is a leap forward from the classical theories Rayleigh first established nearly one hundred fifty years ago. The method is applied to well-known classical problems of semi-infinite extent defined by particle and streaming velocities possessing similar magnitudes: the ``fast streaming'' condition. The compressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved in an approximate, successive manner, and acoustic and streaming field equations are obtained. The latter implicitly provides a succinct physical origin for observed layering phenomenon in bulk streaming flows, as discussed in detail in [see co-article]. We analytically obtain closed-form equations that explain fast steady-state bulk streaming. The foregoing results are used to derive a non-constitutive upper bound on the energetic conversion efficiency of the driving acoustics to the resultant maximum streaming flow magnitude. Ample comparison is made to the classic literature and theories to connect this work to past efforts by many authors. Rigorous validation is obtained over a broad survey of experimental findings from the recent literature.Comment: main article: 18 pages, 8 figures; supplemental material: 4 pages, 2 figure

The quartile functions for the Generalized Gutenberg-Richter distribution ; Las funciones del cuartil para la Distribución de la Función de Gutenberg-Richter generalizada

This study provides quartile and quartile density functions for the Generalized Gutenberg-Richter function. The quartile function provides a way to write a random number generator for the Gutenberg-Richter distributed data. Moreover, we also show the general limitations of the Gutenberg-Richter parameters β, mmax and mmin in this contribution. Este trabajo proporciona funciones de cuartiles y cuartiles de densidad para la función de Gutenberg-Richter generalizada. La función cuartil permite escribir un generador de números aleatorios para los datos distribuidos de Gutenberg-Richter. Además, también se ha estudiado en las limitaciones generales de los parámetros β, mmax y mmin en este trabajo.Fil: Vermeulen, Petrus. University of Pretoria; South Africa.Fil: Haarala Orosco, Mika. University of Joensuu; Finland