Ashworth, Sara

Current standards-based accountability systems, exemplified by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), generally rely on successive year comparisons to gauge educational progress and place special emphasis on achievement in elementary school, but include no mechanisms to monitor the degree to which early improvements noted by increases in these successive year comparisons demonstrate genuine improvements in curricular and instructional practice that lead to higher levels of achievement in later grades. The absence of a longitudinal perspective within these standards-based accountability systems means that critical educational decisions such as the continuation or abandonment of practices or programs may be based on incomplete depictions of student achievement. The present study was designed to test and present an alternate method of data analysis that can be used to complement (not replace) the analysis that is typical of current accountability systems, without any additional testing or resources. The study utilized extant student achievement data for reading and math for more than 9,000 students from a large ethnically and economically diverse school district, and compared the results of data analyses typical of current standards-based accountability systems with those using the proposed longitudinal analyses. While the depictions of student achievement presented by the different methods were rather similar for math, they were vastly different for reading, which suggests that the addition of the proposed longitudinal analysis has the potential to enhance current systems such that they provide more complete depictions of student achievement.

In order for memory questions to accomplish the goals of questions, teachers need to determine specific content and cognitive goals for each question so that questions can direct learners' attention and reinforce an organizational structure for the encoding of information. The purpose of this study was to examine the language used in memory questions for assessment purposes and to examine whether different language options used when formulating memory questions engaged brain areas related to memory and cognition. The language of the questions can affect the cognitive process by which the answer is derived. The two language options that affect cognitive processes are non-specific and specific. This study supplements teachers' working knowledge of the methods and techniques for questioning by providing a basic understanding of cognitive processes that different questions can evoke. This study used techniques from neuroscience to test hypotheses derived directly from education-based theories of cognition in order to validate educational theory. Neuroscience provides knowledge about how the brain senses, processes, stores, and retrieves information. It also provides findings that can be translated into practical applications for the classroom. Therefore, the relationship between education and neuroscience contributes to effective planning, practices, and assessment; it allows a more comprehensive understanding of the difficulties and apprehensions associated with learning. The following study utilized fMRI to answer the general question of the relationship between the memory processes associated with specific and non-specific questions. Seventeen undergraduate and graduate students from a university in South Florida served as subjects. Subjects were presented with a stimulus consisting of specific questions, non-specific questions, and control statements. All questions/statements followed the design of 8 seconds to read the question/statement, 10 seconds to "think" about the answer to the question or the material presented in the statement, 4 seconds for response using a "yes" or "no" button, and a 12 second rest period. Images collected were analyzed using AFNI. Specific cognitive operations improved efficiency for the retrieval of information from memory. Results elucidate differences in neural activity associated with encoding processes and the retrieval of information from memory based on the language used in specific and non-specific questions.