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States and districts share an obligation to provide Multilingual Learners (MLLs) with access to high quality language programs that are proven to be effective in minimizing opportunity gaps between MLLs and non-MLLs. This article reviews how local education agencies (LEAs) allocated their state-issued funding to improve MLL language programs and increase student outcomes. Findings reveal that of the total state-issued MLL funding, LEAs used 88.7% on teacher salaries and benefits, 5.1% on teacher professional development, 4.9% on language program implementation, 0% on language program evaluation, and a small percentage of funding remained unspecified. Collectively, these findings indicate that LEAs did not adhere to the state's funding policies, nor did the state follow their own policies to regulate the LEAs' expenditures. We close with a discussion on how the state can improve their function as an organizational leader and serve as a model for other stakeholders in the shared obligation of the education of MLLs.

Predictive validity considerations in selection dictate choice of the predictor with the highest predictive validity. Implementation of this principle in any specific selection process inevitably entails choice between imperfectly correlated alternative predictors, real or hypothetical, which are equivalent in terms of predictive validity. We show that use of different predictors necessarily results in the admission of partially overlapping groups of candidates. The amount of non-overlap is inversely related to the correlation between predictors and to the selection ratio. For typical values of these factors, the amount of non-overlap is considerable (50%-80%). Thus, the predictor's identity affects the identity and characteristics of the admitted candidates independently of its validity and can be intentionally used to bias the selection outcomes in a desired direction.

Differential granting of extra-examination time (EET) is commonly based on learning disabilities (LD) status: EET is granted to LD examinees and is denied to nondisabled examinees. We argue that LD serves as a proxy for the extent to which time limitation affects the examinee's test score (e). Hence, the validity of the LD-based EET granting policy depends on how well LD status serves as a proxy for e. Reanalysis of 11 comparative experimental studies of the effect of EET shows that LD status is a poor proxy for e. The proportion of nondisabled examinees who benefit from EET roughly equals the corresponding proportion among LD students. Implications of these results for the validity and fairness of this policy are discussed.

This study contributes to the investigation of the variability of the schooling effect on cognitive development between educational systems and its underlying factors, by focusing on 3 cases differing in the characteristics assumed to affect the magnitude of the schooling effect (the quality of the schooling and students' mean ability to benefit from their schooling): the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) educational system in the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and the 2 sectors of the Israeli educational system: the Jewish and Arab systems. Congruent with our expectations, the highest absolute and relative effects of schooling were found in the Israeli Jewish system. In contrast, the results obtained in the 2 Arab systems, namely, the higher schooling effect found in the poorer and more oppressed refugee camps of the West Bank, are surprising and require further investigation.

Schooling is now considered the major factor underlying the development of cognitive abilities. However, most studies on the effect of schooling on cognitive development have been conducted in free and generally supportive western environments. The possible variability of schooling effects between educational systems differing in the quality of schooling they provide or in the ability of the student population to benefit from schooling has been neglected. This work contributes to the study of this variability by estimating the effect of schooling on cognitive development in an educational system characterised by particularly unfavourable circumstances, which combine poor schooling quality and low ability of the student population to benefit from schooling due to economic disadvantage, military occupation, and political oppression: the UN Relief and Works Agency Palestinian refugee camps of the West Bank. The results indicate a lower contribution of schooling to children's cognitive development, both relative to that found in western countries and relative to the effect of age. Schooling is not the major factor underlying children's cognitive development in the refugee camps in the West Bank. These results illustrate the between-system variability of the schooling effects and suggest that poverty and oppression negatively affect the effect of schooling on cognitive development.

Relying on the results of the achievement tests in mathematics, science, native language (Hebrew/Arabic) and English, administered to 1430 5th-grade co-educational classes in Israel, this study examines the between-class variability of the within-class mean score gender differences and its class and school correlates. The four main results of the study are: (1) remarkable between-test stability of the within-class gender gap; (2) considerable variability of the within-class gender gap, in terms of both sign and magnitude, found for each of the four tests: children studying in different classes are exposed to different, sometimes quite opposite, gender differences and this variability is effectively masked by the aggregate-level analyses typically reported in the literature; (3) the lion's share of the variability of the within-class gender gap lies within, rather than between schools; and (4) the relative frequency of within-class gender gaps favouring boys is positively related to school-level characteristics, which qualify as positive indicators of the school's quality and negatively to class size. The within- and between-sector (Arab vs. Jewish) components of this relation are discussed.

Selection to programmes for gifted students in Israel, performed in the second grade, relies on raw ability and achievement test scores, irrespective of age, thereby ignoring the well-known effect of within-grade age differences on test scores. Employing the entire cohort of third graders of legal age (67,366 students, 1.4% of whom were enrolled in a gifted programme) in 2011, this study examined the relationship between chronological age and the probability of acceptance to programmes for the gifted in Israel. The results reveal an almost perfect correlation between chronological age and the probability of being selected for a gifted programme (r[superscript 2] = 0.92): older students have approximately 3.5 times greater chance of acceptance than younger students. Reliance on raw ability and achievement test scores, unadjusted for age, in selection to gifted students programmes is thus shown to be biased in favour of older students and to unintentionally discriminate against younger students.

The regression-based discrepancy definition of learning disabilities has been suggested by Rutter and Yule as an improvement of the well-known and much criticized achievement-intelligence discrepancy definition, whereby the examinee's predicted reading attainment is substituted for the intelligence score in the discrepancy expression. Even though the regression-based discrepancy definition has been with us for more than 30 years, critical examination of this approach is scarce. This article fills this lacuna by examining the implications of two variables in the model on the diagnosis of learning disabilities: (a) the effect of predictive validity on the proportion of examinees identified as learning disabled, and (b) the effect of the predictor's identity on the identity of the examinees diagnosed with learning disabilities. Implications of these effects concerning the validity of the regression-based discrepancy model and of the results of its implementation are discussed. (Contains 5 figures and 2 notes.)

Standardized effect size measures typically employed in behavioral and social sciences research in the multi-group case (e.g., [eta][superscript 2], f[superscript 2]) evaluate between-group variability in terms of either total or within-group variability, such as variance or standard deviation--that is, measures of dispersion about the mean. In contrast, the definition of Cohen's "d", the effect size measure typically computed in the two-group case, is incongruent due to a conceptual difference between the numerator--which measures between-group variability by the intuitive and straightforward raw difference between the two group means--and the denominator--which measures within-group variability in terms of the difference between all observations and the group mean (i.e., the pooled within-groups standard deviation, S[subscript W]). Two congruent alternatives to "d", in which the root square or absolute mean difference between all observation pairs is substituted for S[subscript W] as the variability measure in the denominator of "d", are suggested and their conceptual and statistical advantages and disadvantages are discussed. (Contains 3 footnotes.)

Fiedler and Kareev (2006) showed that small samples can, in principle, outperform large samples in terms of the quality of contingency-based binary choice. The 1st part of this comment critically examines these authors' claim that this small sample advantage (SSA) contradicts Bernoulli's law of large numbers and concludes that this claim is unwarranted. The 2nd part of the comment provides insight into the etiology of the SSA and points to the following as necessary conditions for the SSA's occurrence: (a) the statistical invalidity of the underlying threshold-based decision algorithm and (b) the particular payoff scheme underlying the definition of the decisions' quality. Together, these 2 factors explain how better information provided by larger samples is translated into worse decisions. (Contains 7 figures and 4 footnotes.)

This essay recounts Hermann von Helmholtz's trip to represent Germany at the International Electrical Congress in Chicago in 1893 as well as his reception by various members of the American scientific, technological, and cultural elite in several other American cities. In doing so, it seeks to portray something of the vitality of the youthful and increasingly important American scientific community; of the strong relationship between American and German scientists, including how Helmholtz used and was used by them and various other members of the American elite to promote science and culture in America as well as to promote his own and German interests; and, finally, of what many considered to be the close interactions between science and technology in the late nineteenth century. In short, the essay seeks to use Helmholtz's trip to capture a sense of the broader relationship among science, the nation-state, and cultural elites in Gilded-Age America and between Germany and America. (Contains 3 figures and 131 footnotes.)

Using the ''between-grade levels'' regression discontinuity design, this study examined the hypothesized differential sensitivity of logico-mathematical (LM) and infralogical (IL) operational tasks to the effects of chronological age and first grade schooling in a sample of 580 1st and 2nd grade Israeli children. The results indicate that the development of logico-mathematical operational skills (classification, class inclusion and transitivity) is mainly attributable to schooling. In contrast, the effect of schooling on the development of conservation of mass, liquid quantity and number (clearly an infralogical task) is negligible; acquisition of conservation is almost exclusively due to maturation and out-of-school experiences. The results support the theoretical predictions derived from French-Swiss research of the last two decades and are inconsistent with claims regarding the specificity of schooling effects to tasks that are taught in school. (Contains 6 tables and 4 figures.)

Narrow Window theory, suggested by Y. Kareev ten years ago, has so far focused on one central implication of the limited capacity of working memory on intuitive correlation estimation, namely, overestimation of the distal population correlation. This paper points to additional and perhaps more dramatic implications due to the large dispersion of intuitive estimates: (a) large estimation errors, possibly causing overestimation of negligible [rhos], misses of strong [rhos], and distorted hierarchies of the [rhos] between different pairs of variables; and (b) large interpersonal differences in the estimation of any given and highly incongruent hierarchies of estimated correlations between different pairs of variables. These implications impede both individuals' adaptation to the empirical world and communication among themselves.

This article challenges Yaakov Kareev's (1995a, 2000) argument regarding the positive bias of intuitive correlation estimates due to working memory capacity limitations and its adaptive value. The authors show that, under narrow window theory's primacy effect assumption, there is a considerable between-individual variability of the effects of capacity limitations on the intuitive assessment of correlation, in terms of both sign and magnitude: Limited capacity acts as an amplifier for some individuals and as a silencer for others. Furthermore, the average amount of attenuation exceeds the average amount of amplification, and the more so, the smaller the capacity. Implications regarding the applicability and contribution of the bias notion in this context and the evaluation of the adaptive value of capacity limitations are discussed.

This study estimated the independent effects of age and schooling in grades 7-9 on scores obtained on invalid conditional and class syllogisms. The results, which point to a negative, albeit small, effect of out-of-school experience and to a sizeable positive effect of schooling, replicate previous findings in a different age range and support the counterintuitive hypothesis that accumulated daily experience with conditionals has a negative effect on the development of conditional reasoning, and that improved performance on invalid problems with age is entirely attributable to schooling. Contrary to most cognitive tasks, therefore, in which schooling operates in the same direction as out-of-school experience, in this case, schooling breaks daily-life interpretational habits, and therefore, is critical for development.

Despite its intuitive appeal and popularity, Thorndike's constant ratio (CR) model for unbiased selection is inherently inconsistent in "n"-free selection. Satisfaction of the condition for unbiased selection, when formulated in terms of success/acceptance probabilities, usually precludes satisfaction by the converse probabilities of rejection/failure, and vice versa. This paper suggests that this inconsistency is unavoidable due to the (negative) linear relation between "percent accepted" ("P") and "percent rejected" (1--"P"), which does not preserve ratios and, thus, invalidates the conceptualization and measurement of selection bias in ratio terms. Therefore, we propose to substitute the CR model with a constant difference (CD) model for the definition and measurement of selection bias, and show the latter's underlying rationale and its applicability in both "n"-free and fixed-"n" selection.