What is Important for Improving K-12 Student Learning? Item Response Analysis from a National Survey of School Boards.

• Activity Number: 353
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Education
• Author(s): Dai-Trang Le*+
• Companies: Iowa State University
• Keywords: Charter and Public Schools, Frequent Use of Assessment Data ; Item Response Theory, Graded Response Model ; National School Boards and Superintendents Survey ; Professional Development ; Student Learning Outcomes ; TPACK

Abstract

In an effort to understand the attitudes of school boards related to the goal of improving student achievement, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), the Fordham Institute, the Iowa Association of School Boards (IASB), and the Wallace Foundation collaboratively conducted a national survey of board members and superintendents in 2009.

This paper presents the analysis of the responses to one survey question, question 21, addressing approaches to improving student learning. Question 21 consists of 11 issues rated on a 5-point Likert-type range from a sample of 1,020 respondents. Application of a graded response model is employed to measure the underlying variable attitude of the respondents based on their response scores. The findings suggest that the respondents considered leadership the most important item and variation of school choice such as charter schools as the least impor