Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Evaluating Schools Based on the Performance of Students With Disabilities: A Comparison of Status and Value-added Approaches(2006-04-27) Embler, Sandra Dee; Burke, Philip J.; Special Education; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to describe, analyze, and compare the results of five commonly used approaches to measuring school-level performance for the subgroup of students with disabilities. Using the reading and mathematics scale scores of students in grades two, four, and six on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) and the California Achievement Tests (CAT/5) within a large school district in the mid-Atlantic, five approaches were applied to classify schools as high-performing or low-performing based on the subgroup students with disabilities. The approaches applied included three status approaches (cross-sectional, cross-sectional with confidence interval, and three-year rolling average) and two value-added approaches (unadjusted and adjusted for student demographics). The characteristics of schools classified as high-performing and low-performing based on the performance of students with disabilities using each of the approaches were explored. Each approach was also examined for its reliability, fairness, inclusiveness, and usefulness. Significant differences in the performance of students with disabilities based on socioeconomic status were observed across all grade levels, but no differences in gain scores were consistently observed. No significant differences in reading and mathematics performance were consistently found across grade levels based on the disability group and LRE of students. Overall, none of the accountability approaches employed reliably rated schools based on the performance of students with disabilities. Even within the same subject area and using the same approaches, schools labeled as high-performing for students with disabilities one year were labeled as low-performing the following year and vice versa. Schools classified as high-performing using the cross-sectional and three-year averaging approaches demonstrated some bias against high-poverty schools and schools with large percentages of minority students. Schools classified as high-performing using the cross-sectional with confidence approach disproportionately identified schools with small numbers of students as high-performing. The value-added approaches were least biased in terms of socioeconomic status and the percentage of minority students, but were limited in their inclusiveness. The usefulness of all the approaches was limited by complicated assessment and accountability policies and the use of non-standard accommodations. All analyses were affected by the small number of students with disabilities in the subgroupItem Teaching Amidst High-stakes Accountability: Cases of Three 'Exemplary' Teachers(2005-08-01) Buese, Daria Elene; Price, Jeremy N.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Teachers are regularly acknowledged as the single most important within school factor influencing student achievement. Yet, despite this claim, little is known about how teachers themselves understand high-stakes accountability in relation to their teaching practice. To study that relationship, this study asked how exemplary teachers' constructs of good teaching reside in a high-stakes accountability climate. The study was conducted in Maryland, during the first year of the restructuring of its previously high-stakes accountability system in response to the 2002 ratification of the No Child Left Behind Act. I employed an interpretive/descriptive case study methodology. Cases were developed on three mathematics teachers, two fifth grade teachers and one eighth grade teacher, who were selected by a panel of educational stakeholders within their individual school districts as Maryland Teacher of the Year candidates. Each teacher enacted a new mathematics curriculum, prepared their students for a new state achievement test, and responded to school based accountability driven structures and directives during the 2002-2003 school year. Data sources include classroom observations over an eight month period, interviews with the teachers and their principals, and artifacts from observations and interviews. Results indicated that the teachers' constructs of good teaching were based primarily on their beliefs about teaching as a moral endeavor with regard to their relationships with their students, the management of their classroom, and the way they represented mathematical knowledge and learning. Although each teacher addressed the well articulated academic achievement goals of Maryland's accountability policies in their practices, the 'principles' of accountability, the values, beliefs, and philosophies that underlie educational goals, were poorly expressed by the state making the teachers' constructs of good teaching sometimes at odds with official messages about accountable teaching. I concluded that although the teachers generally made significant efforts to enact accountability driven practices and work within prescribed curricular and school based structures aimed at improving instruction, the tensions between the teachers' principles of instructional accountability and the accountability messages they heard from the state must be mediated if instructional improvement in accordance with formal accountability goals are to take root.