Bad Apples or Bad Orchards? An Organizational Analysis of Educator Cheating on Standardized Accountability Tests

2020 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-352
Author(s):  
Jacob Hibel ◽  
Daphne M. Penn
Keyword(s):  
Standardized Tests ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Standardized Test ◽  
Organizational Analysis ◽  
District Leaders ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Multiple Strategies ◽  
Sequential Mixed Methods ◽  
Test Cheating ◽  
Rule Breaking

Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we analyze quantitative administrative and survey data and qualitative archival data to examine the organizational character of standardized test cheating among educators in Georgia elementary schools. Applying a theoretical typology that identifies distinct forms of rule breaking in bureaucratic organizations, we find that teacher-focused, individual-level explanations for cheating are inadequate, particularly in the context of large-scale cheating outbreaks. Our findings suggest cheating scandals tend to arise when rule-breaking decisions shift toward higher levels of the educational bureaucracy, and school and district leaders enact multiple strategies to motivate coordinated cheating efforts among lower-level educators. In these scenarios, a “bad apples” explanation focused on rogue teachers fails to account for the systematic organizational underpinnings of standardized test cheating. We describe the institutional and organizational predictors of organized adult cheating on standardized tests, and we conclude with a discussion of our findings’ implications for education policy and research.

A Closer Look at Standardized Tests

1982 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 50-54
Author(s):  
Donald J. Freeman ◽  
Therese M. Kuhs ◽  
Lucy B. Knappen ◽  
Andrew C. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
Instructional Strategies ◽  
Standardized Tests ◽  
Standardized Test ◽  
Learning Problems ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Teacher's Knowledge ◽  
Standardized Test Results

It is commonly argued that teachers should use scores from standardized tests to facilitate instruction. Specifically, teachers are encouraged to use standardized test results to evaluate student achievement on both a group and individual level, to identify students with learning problems, and to assess the effectiveness of instructional strategies that have been used. The use of standardized tests for any of these functions, however, must be tempered by the teacher's knowledge of the extent to which the content of the test parallels the content of instruction.

Let’s tweet again? Social networks and literature achievement in high school students

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-64
Author(s):  
Gian Paolo Barbetta ◽  
Paolo Canino ◽  
Stefano Cima
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Standardized Test ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
School Students ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Internet Connections ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The availability of cheap Wi-Fi internet connections has encouraged schools to adopt Web 2.0 platforms for teaching, with the intention of stimulating students’ academic achievement and participation in school. Moreover, during the recent explosion of the SARS-CoV-2 crisis that forced many countries to close schools (as well as offices and factories), the widespread diffusion of these applications kept school systems going. Despite their widespread use as teaching tools, the effect of adopting Web 2.0 platforms on students’ performance has never been rigorously tested. We fill this gap in the literature by analyzing the impact of using Twitter as a teaching tool on high school students’ literature skills. Based on a large-scale, randomized controlled trial that involved 70 schools and about 1,500 students, we find that using Twitter to teach literature has an overall negative effect on students’ average achievement, reducing standardized test scores by about 25 percent of a standard deviation. The negative effect is stronger on students who usually perform better.

Digital Mega-Studies as a New Research Paradigm: Governing the Health Research of the Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 155626462110414
Author(s):  
Jessica Bell ◽  
Megan Prictor ◽  
Lauren Davenport ◽  
Lynda O’Brien ◽  
Melissa Wake
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Group Processes ◽  
Research Paradigm ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Governance Challenges ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Multi Stakeholder ◽  
New Research

‘Digital Mega-Studies’ are entirely or extensively digitised, longitudinal, population-scale initiatives, collecting, storing, and making available individual-level research data of different types and from multiple sources, shaped by technological developments and unforeseeable risks over time. The Australian ‘Gen V’ project exemplifies this new research paradigm. In 2019, we undertook a multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder process to map Digital Mega-Studies’ key characteristics, legal and governance challenges and likely solutions. We conducted large and small group processes within a one-day symposium and directed online synthesis and group prioritisation over subsequent weeks. We present our methods (including elicitation, affinity mapping and prioritisation processes) and findings, proposing six priority governance principles across three areas—data, participation, trust—to support future high-quality, large-scale digital research in health.

scholarly journals Differentiating amyloid beta spread in autosomal dominant and sporadic Alzheimer's disease

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Levitis ◽  
Jacob W Vogel ◽  
Thomas Funck ◽  
Vladimir Halchinski ◽  
Serge Gauthier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Spatial Pattern ◽  
Amyloid Beta ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Autosomal Dominant ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Sporadic Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Data Driven Approach

Amyloid-beta (Aβ) deposition is one of the hallmark pathologies in both sporadic Alzheimer's disease (sAD) and autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease (ADAD), the latter of which is caused by mutations in genes involved in Aβ processing. Despite Aβ deposition being a centerpiece to both sAD and ADAD, some differences between these AD subtypes have been observed with respect to the spatial pattern of Aβ. Previous work has shown that the spatial pattern of Aβ in individuals spanning the sAD spectrum can be reproduced with high accuracy using an epidemic spreading model (ESM), which simulates the diffusion of Aβ across neuronal connections and is constrained by individual rates of Aβ production and clearance. However, it has not been investigated whether Aβ deposition in the rarer ADAD can be modeled in the same way, and if so, how congruent the spreading patterns of Aβ across sAD and ADAD are. We leverage the ESM as a data-driven approach to probe individual-level variation in the spreading patterns of Aβ across three different large-scale imaging datasets (2 SAD, 1 ADAD). We applied the ESM separately to the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging initiative (N=737), the Open Access Series of Imaging Studies (N=510), and the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Network (N=249), the latter two of which were processed using an identical pipeline. We assessed inter- and intra-individual model performance in each dataset separately, and further identified the most likely epicenter of Aβ spread for each individual. Using epicenters defined in previous work in sAD, the ESM provided moderate prediction of the regional pattern of Aβ deposition across all three datasets. We further find that, while the most likely epicenter for most Aβ-positive subjects overlaps with the default mode network, 13% of ADAD individuals were best characterized by a striatal origin of Aβ spread. These subjects were also distinguished by being younger than ADAD subjects with a DMN Aβ origin, despite having a similar estimated age of symptom onset. Together, our results suggest that most ADAD patients express Aβ spreading patters similar to those of sAD, but that there may be a subset of ADAD patients with a separate, striatal phenotype.

scholarly journals Public attitudes towards algorithmic personalization and use of personal data online: evidence from Germany, Great Britain, and the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Kozyreva ◽  
Philipp Lorenz-Spreen ◽  
Ralph Hertwig ◽  
Stephan Lewandowsky ◽  
Stefan M. Herzog
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Personalized Services

AbstractPeople rely on data-driven AI technologies nearly every time they go online, whether they are shopping, scrolling through news feeds, or looking for entertainment. Yet despite their ubiquity, personalization algorithms and the associated large-scale collection of personal data have largely escaped public scrutiny. Policy makers who wish to introduce regulations that respect people’s attitudes towards privacy and algorithmic personalization on the Internet would greatly benefit from knowing how people perceive personalization and personal data collection. To contribute to an empirical foundation for this knowledge, we surveyed public attitudes towards key aspects of algorithmic personalization and people’s data privacy concerns and behavior using representative online samples in Germany (N = 1065), Great Britain (N = 1092), and the United States (N = 1059). Our findings show that people object to the collection and use of sensitive personal information and to the personalization of political campaigning and, in Germany and Great Britain, to the personalization of news sources. Encouragingly, attitudes are independent of political preferences: People across the political spectrum share the same concerns about their data privacy and show similar levels of acceptance regarding personalized digital services and the use of private data for personalization. We also found an acceptability gap: People are more accepting of personalized services than of the collection of personal data and information required for these services. A large majority of respondents rated, on average, personalized services as more acceptable than the collection of personal information or data. The acceptability gap can be observed at both the aggregate and the individual level. Across countries, between 64% and 75% of respondents showed an acceptability gap. Our findings suggest a need for transparent algorithmic personalization that minimizes use of personal data, respects people’s preferences on personalization, is easy to adjust, and does not extend to political advertising.

Czech civil sector face-to-face with freelance activism

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (11/12) ◽  
pp. 774-791
Author(s):  
Pavol Frič ◽  
Martin Vávra
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Online Activism ◽  
Civil Sector ◽  
Relationship Of

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to answer following question: what is the relationship between member activism performed through civil society organizations (CSOs) and individualized freelance activism (in form of online activism, everyday making, political consumerism or checkbook activism) independent of organizational framework? Is it a relationship of mutual competition or support? Design/methodology/approach Analysis is carried out on data from 2009 questionnaire-based survey on volunteering, representative for adult Czech population. The data set allowed the authors to relate member activism with freelance activism and in case of member activism distinguish the type of organization and the level of its professionalization. Findings Dominant pattern the authors identified in data is mutual support of both types of volunteering documented by significant overlap of these forms of public engagement. The most striking is the overlap for active members of new advocacy NGOs and the weakest for traditional clubs. Regression analysis shows that on an individual level “mixed activism” (compared with “pure freelance activism”) is linked with higher education and higher confidence in civic organizations. Originality/value The civil practice of individualized freelance activism was described and analysed by various authors as an activity of specific types of activist, but there has not yet been any research giving reflection on such a large scale of freelance activism types as in the analysis. The authors set them together in contrast to the member (collective, organized) form of civic activism and also took into account the influence of professionalization and type of CSOs.

Trust in scientists in times of pandemic: Panel evidence from 12 countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (40) ◽  
pp. e2108576118
Author(s):  
Yann Algan ◽  
Daniel Cohen ◽  
Eva Davoine ◽  
Martial Foucault ◽  
Stefanie Stantcheva
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Individual Support ◽  
Compliant Behavior ◽  
Paradoxical Effects ◽  
The Government ◽  
Nonpharmaceutical Interventions

This article analyzes the specific and critical role of trust in scientists on both the support for and compliance with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit large-scale, longitudinal, and representative surveys for 12 countries over the period from March to December 2020, and we complement the analysis with experimental data. We find that trust in scientists is the key driving force behind individual support for and compliance with NPIs and for favorable attitudes toward vaccination. The effect of trust in government is more ambiguous and tends to diminish support for and compliance with NPIs in countries where the recommendations from scientists and the government were not aligned. Trust in others also has seemingly paradoxical effects: in countries where social trust is high, the support for NPIs is low due to higher expectations that others will voluntary social distance. Our individual-level longitudinal data also allows us to evaluate the effects of within-person changes in trust over the pandemic: we show that trust levels and, in particular, trust in scientists have changed dramatically for individuals and within countries, with important subsequent effects on compliant behavior and support for NPIs. Such findings point out the challenging but critical need to maintain trust in scientists during a lasting pandemic that strains citizens and governments.

Cultural Capital and Volunteering: A Multilevel Study From China

2021 ◽  
pp. 089976402110573
Author(s):  
Zhiming Liu ◽  
Haiwei Jia
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Positive Effects

In this article, we extend Wilson and Musick’s concept of cultural capital, which was defined as the culture of benevolence, to a multilevel concept and build a multilevel cultural capital theory about individual (nonmandatory) volunteering based on religious beliefs, political values, belief in social justice, and belief in social trust in the context of volunteering in China. Data from the 2012 Chinese General Social Survey, China’s national and comprehensive large-scale social survey project, are used to empirically investigate the influences of individual-level cultural capital (values of benevolence) and contextual-level cultural capital (cultural climate of benevolence) on individual volunteering. In terms of individual-level cultural capital, membership in the Chinese Communist Party (China’s ruling party), belief in social justice, and belief in social trust have significant positive relationships with individual volunteering. In terms of contextual-level cultural capital, the religious climate and justice climate in a province have significant positive effects on individual volunteering.

Perceived Trust and Confidence for Cryptocurrency Adoption

2022 ◽  
pp. 250-279
Author(s):  
Ewilly Jie Ying Liew ◽  
Wei Li Peh ◽  
Zhuan Kee Leong
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Perceived Trust ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Regulatory Bodies ◽  
The Individual ◽  
National Databases

This chapter seeks to examine the influence of public perceptions of trust in people and confidence in institutions on cryptocurrency adoption, taking into account the individual-level demographic factors and the regional-level contextual factors. Data is obtained from three large-scale international surveys and national databases and analyzed using R software. The multivariate results demonstrate that individuals' public perceptions of trust and confidence significantly contribute to cryptocurrency adoption. Lower perceived trust in people and higher perceived confidence in civil service and international regulatory bodies increase cryptocurrency adoption, while perceived confidence in political and financial institutions discourages cryptocurrency adoption. Additionally, the univariate results find significant comparisons of gender and perceived trust differences on the predictors of cryptocurrency adoption. This chapter discusses and provides insights on the social impact and future of cryptocurrency adoption, particularly among the upper- and lower-middle-income countries.

scholarly journals NM GRADS: Lessons Learned from Implementing a School-Based Program for Young Parents Across New Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (S2) ◽  
pp. 163-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Harper ◽  
Dean Hopper ◽  
Betsy Keating ◽  
Jessica Harding
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
District Leaders ◽  
Program Administrators ◽  
School Based ◽  
Young Fathers ◽  
Care And Support ◽  
Parenting Students

Abstract Purpose The New Mexico Graduation Reality and Dual-role Skills (GRADS) program provides services for expectant and parenting students at high schools. The GRADS program has operated since 1989, serving more than 17,000 youth. This study summarizes the GRADS program model and program administrators’ lessons learned from implementing this comprehensive, large-scale program. Description The GRADS program is a multicomponent intervention that can include a classroom intervention, case management, linkages to child care and health care, and support for young fathers. The program aims to support expectant and parenting youth in finishing high school, delaying a repeat pregnancy, promoting health outcomes for their children, and preparing for college and career. This study presents program administrators’ lessons learned to increase understanding of how to implement a statewide program to support expectant and parenting students. Assessment During the 2010–2017 school years, the GRADS program operated in 26–31 sites each year, serving a total of 2691 parenting youth. Program administrators identified lessons learned from implementing the GRADS program during that period of expansion, including allowing variation across sites based on resources and needs, providing centralized implementation support, fostering buy-in from school and district leaders, and collecting consistent data to better understand participant outcomes. Conclusions Although not based on a rigorous impact or implementation study, this article provides lessons learned from a statewide, school-based program that may be a promising way to serve a large number of expectant and parenting youth and help them overcome challenges for completing high school.

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