This report provides an overview of kindergarten readiness of six Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) kindergarten cohorts from the 2016-17 to the 2021-22 school year. This report is accompanied by the Annual Digest of City Schools Kindergarten Statistics, 2022 Edition (Baltimore Education Research Consortium [BERC], 2022), which provides…

Survival analysis is an advanced statistical method to investigate the occurrence and the timing of an important event such as school access, dropout, and graduation in a longitudinal framework. The aim of our study is to provide practical guidelines for empirical researchers in choosing an appropriate survival analysis model. For this goal, this…

A commonly held belief among educators, researchers, and students is that high-quality texts are easier to read than low-quality texts, as they contain more engaging narrative and story-like elements. Interestingly, these assumptions have typically failed to be supported by the literature on writing. Previous research suggests that higher quality…

In 2010, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Education Program has established the Deeper Learning Initiative, which focuses on students' development of deeper learning skills (i.e., the mastery of core academic content, critical-thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and "learn-how-to-learn" skills). Two test…

This handbook describes the responsibilities of district and school assessment coordinators in the administration of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). This updated guidebook contains the following sections: (1) General Assessment Guidelines for All Assessments; (2) Writing Specific Guidelines; (3) Reading and Mathematics…

Comprehension tests are often used interchangeably, suggesting an implicit assumption that they are all measuring the same thing. We examine the validity of this assumption by comparing some of the most popular reading comprehension measures used in research and clinical practice in the United States: the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT), the two…

This technical report and user's guide is designed to provide researchers with an overview of the design and implementation of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), as well as with information on how to access the PISA 2009 data. This information is meant to supplement that presented in Organization for Economic Cooperation…

To explore whether different balances of fiction/non-fiction reading and challenge might help explain differences in reading achievement between genders, data on 45,670 pupils who independently read over 3 million books were analysed. Moderate (rather than high or low) levels of challenge were positively associated with achievement gain, but…

This study established criterion-related validity for the Reading Passages Subtest of a locally developed curriculum-based measurement (CBM) instrument, with cross-validation across reading curricula and criterion measures. Correlations of 479 primary grade students' reading scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills provided support for CBM…

This study evaluated the technical qualities of a naturalistic test of reading decoding skills, the"Diagnostic Names Task." Evaluation of the measure with 25 elementary grade disabled readers examined subtest reliability, sensitivity to change resulting from instruction, meaningful clustering of subskills, and criterion-related validity.…

The Pepper Visual Skills for Reading Test was assessed as a measure of reading ability with meaningful text in 38 adults with macular degeneration; scores were compared with assessment made using the Gray Oral Reading Test, a previously standardized assessment. The test's validity was confirmed. (Author/JDD)

This study analyzed the factor structure of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests Revised (WRMT-R), a test battery used to measure basic reading skills. Findings indicated that both forms of the WRMT-R contain a large unrotated general factor and, when rotated obliquely, two correlated factors representing basic skills and reading comprehension.…

The present investigation was intended to provide information on the type of strategies employed by learning disabled (LD) students on standardized, group-administered achievement test items. Of particular interest was level of strategy effectiveness and possible differences in strategy use between LD and non-disabled students. Students attending…

Working on the assumption that when reading comprehension is viewed from a constructivist framework, where meaning grows and changes as the text progresses, categorization into comprehension levels such as literal and inferential will be misleading, two third grade standardized multiple choice test items were selected from a larger body of test…

Designed to assess the ability to interpret the major types of figurative language or tropes such as similes, metaphors, proverbs, and personification, the two forms of this instrument each contain 50 items in a two-part, multiple-choice format. Part I tests the meaning of figures of speech in isolation; part II tests the meaning in the context of…