Faculty and Staff

This paper presents a Bayesian framework for evaluative classification. Current education policy debates center on arguments about whether and how to use student test score data in school and personnel evaluation. Proponents of such use argue that refusing to use data violates both the public’s need to hold schools accountable when they use taxpayer dollars and students’ right to educational opportunities. Opponents of formulaic use of test-score data argue that most standardized test data is susceptible to fatal technical flaws, is a partial picture of student achievement, and leads to behavior that corrupts the measures.

A Bayesian perspective on summative ordinal classification is a possible framework for combining quantitative outcome data for students with the qualitative types of evaluation that critics of high-stakes testing advocate. This paper describes the key characteristics of a Bayesian perspective on classification, describes a method to translate a naïve Bayesian classifier into a point-based system for evaluation, and draws conclusions from the comparison on the construction of algorithmic (including point-based) systems that could capture the political and practical benefits of a Bayesian approach. The most important practical conclusion is that point-based systems with fixed components and weights cannot capture the dynamic and political benefits of a reciprocal relationship between professional judgment and quantitative student outcome data.

This is a brief text intended for use in undergraduate school-and-society classes. Your class may also be titled “Social foundations of education.” “Social foundations of education” is an interdisciplinary field that includes both humanities and social-science perspectives on schooling. It thus includes study of the philosophy and history of education as well as sociological, economic, anthropological, and political perspectives on schooling.

The core of most social foundations classes lies in the relationship between formal schooling and broader society. This emphasis means that while some parts of psychology may be related to the core issues of social foundations classes—primarily social psychology—the questions that are asked within a social-foundations class are different from the questions raised in child development, educational psychology, and most teaching-methods classes. For example, after finishing the first chapter of this text, you should be able to answer the question, “Why does the federal government pay public schools to feed poor students at breakfast and lunch?” Though there is some psychology research tying nutrition to behavior and learning, the policy is based on much broader expectations of schools. In this case, “Children learn better if they are well-fed” both is based on research and also is an incomplete answer.

The current debate over graduate rate calculations and results has glossed over the relationship between student migration and the accuracy of various graduation rates proposed over the past five years. Three general grade-based graduation rates have been proposed recently, and each has a parallel version that includes an adjustment for migration, whether international, internal to the U.S., or between different school sectors. All of the adjustment factors have a similar form, allowing simulation of estimates from real data, assuming different unmeasured net migration rates. In addition, a new age-based graduation rate, based on mathematical demography, allows the simulation of estimates on a parallel basis using data from Virginia's public schools.

Both the direct analysis and simulation demonstrate that graduation rates can only be useful with accurate information about student migration. A discussion of Florida's experiences with longitudinal cohort graduation rates highlights some of the difficulties with the current status of the oldest state databases and the need for both technical confidence and definitional clarity. Meeting the No Child Left Behind mandates for school-level graduation rates requires confirmation of transfers and an audit of any state system for accuracy, and basing graduation rates on age would be a significant improvement over rates calculated using grade-based data.

The spread of academic testing for accountability purposes in multiple countries has obscured at least two historical purposes of academic testing: community ritual and management of the social structure. Testing for accountability is very different from the purpose of academic challenges one can identify in community “examinations” in 19th century North America, or exams’ controlling access to the civil service in Imperial China. Rather than testing for ritual or access to mobility, the modern uses of testing are much closer to the state-building project of a tax census, such as the Domesday Book of medieval Britain after the Norman Invasion, the social engineering projects described in James Scott's Seeing like a State (1998), or the “mapping the world” project that David Nye described in America as Second Creation (2004). This paper will explore both the instrumental and cultural differences among testing as ritual, testing as mobility control, and testing as state-building.

One way to view ‘equitable pedagogy’ is through an opportunity to learn (OTL) lens, meaning that regardless of race, class, or culture, a student has access to rigorous and meaningful content, as well as appropriate resources and instruction necessary to learn and demonstrate understanding of that content. Assessment holds a unique position in the classroom in that it can both uncover whether inequitable conditions exist (i.e., performance gaps, denied OTL) and provide an OTL by mediating communication between teacher and students regarding learning progress and what is important to learn. Nevertheless, individuals entering teacher education programs often hold deficit views toward marginalized students, such as Language Minorities (LMs), believe that assessment strictly serves to evaluate learning, and do not do consider how language and culture influence student thinking–views supplanting assessment’s role at supporting an equitable pedagogy for LMs. Through surveys, interviews, program artifacts, and classroom observation, I report on a case study of one pre-service physics teacher, Dean, to depict how his expertise at assessing science did evolve throughout his yearlong teacher education program in terms of (a) becoming more knowledgeable of the role of language and (b) developing a belief in incorporating ‘discourse’ while assessing science. Within the case study, I analyze one particular episode from Dean’s teaching practicum to highlight remaining challenges for pre-service teachers to integrate science and language in classroom assessment—namely, interpreting students’ use of language along with their understanding of core science ideas. The findings underscore the need for connecting language and equity issues to content-area assessment in teacher preparation.

Quiescin sulfhydryl oxidase 1 (QSOX1) is a highly conserved disulfide bond-generating enzyme that is overexpressed in diverse tumor types. Its enzymatic activity promotes the growth and invasion of tumor cells and alters extracellular matrix composition. In a nude mouse-human tumor xenograft model, tumors containing shRNA for QSOX1 grew significantly more slowly than controls, suggesting that QSOX1 supports a proliferative phenotype in vivo. High throughput screening experiments identified ebselen as an in vitro inhibitor of QSOX1 enzymatic activity. Ebselen treatment of pancreatic and renal cancer cell lines stalled tumor growth and inhibited invasion through Matrigel in vitro. Daily oral treatment with ebselen resulted in a 58% reduction in tumor growth in mice bearing human pancreatic tumor xenografts compared to controls. Mass spectrometric analysis of ebselen-treated QSOX1 mechanistically revealed that C165 and C237 of QSOX1 covalently bound to ebselen. This report details the anti-neoplastic properties of ebselen in pancreatic and renal cancer cell lines. The results here offer a “proof-of-principle” that enzymatic inhibition of QSOX1 may have clinical relevancy.

S-cysteinylated albumin and methionine-oxidized apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) have been posed as candidate markers of diseases associated with oxidative stress. Here, a dilute-and-shoot form of LC–electrospray ionization–MS requiring half a microliter of blood plasma was employed to simultaneously quantify the relative abundance of these oxidized proteoforms in samples stored at −80 °C, −20 °C, and room temperature and exposed to multiple freeze-thaw cycles and other adverse conditions in order to assess the possibility that protein oxidation may occur as a result of poor sample storage or handling. Samples from a healthy donor and a participant with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes started at the same low level of protein oxidation and behaved similarly; significant increases in albumin oxidation via S-cysteinylation were found to occur within hours at room temperature and days at −20 °C. Methionine oxidation of apoA-I took place on a longer time scale, setting in after albumin oxidation reached a plateau. Freeze–thaw cycles had a minimal effect on protein oxidation. In matched collections, protein oxidation in serum was the same as that in plasma. Albumin and apoA-I oxidation were not affected by sample headspace or the degree to which vials were sealed. ApoA-I, however, was unexpectedly found to oxidize faster in samples with lower surface-area-to-volume ratios. An initial survey of samples from patients with inflammatory conditions normally associated with elevated oxidative stress-including acute myocardial infarction and prostate cancer—demonstrated a lack of detectable apoA-I oxidation. Albumin S-cysteinylation in these samples was consistent with known but relatively brief exposures to temperatures above −30 °C (the freezing point of blood plasma). Given their properties and ease of analysis, these oxidized proteoforms, once fully validated, may represent the first markers of blood plasma specimen integrity based on direct measurement of oxidative molecular damage that can occur under suboptimal storage conditions.

This article explores a variety of contemporary picturebooks that offer the picturebook as an object of construction, as a character, and as portals to other narrative levels. These metafictive devices break the traditional boundaries between fictional and real worlds by involving the reader in the narrative, talking to them directly, and requiring them to actively participate in the construction of the narrative. In addition, we offer some ways these picturebooks may be integrated into the elementary reading curriculum.