There is growing evidence that current classification methods are not consistent with current empirical knowledge of childhood psychopathology and the optimal way to classify school-age children remains controversial. The current study investigated three classification methods (categorical, dimensional, person-oriented) for use in predicting…

Background: Phonological awareness tests are amongst the best predictors of literacy and predict outcomes of Key Stage 1 assessment of the National Curriculum in England at age 7. However, it is unknown whether their ability to predict National Curricular outcomes extends to Key Stage 2 assessments given at age 11, or also whether the predictive…

Many districts and schools across the U. S. have begun to develop and administer assessments to complement state testing systems and provide additional information to monitor curriculum, instruction and schools. In advance of this trend, the Jackson Public Schools (JPS) district has had a district benchmark testing system in place for many years.…

In this technical report, data are presented on the predictive and concurrent relation between various student demographic variables (gender, race/ethnicity, special education status, Title 1 status, English language learning status, and economic disadvantage) and three reading easyCBMs (passage reading fluency, vocabulary, and multiple-choice…

The validity of three subtests of the Dynamic Indicators for Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) was investigated for kindergarten children in a large urban school district. A stratified, random sample of 330 participants was drawn from an entire cohort of kindergarten children. Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and Nonsense…

Although clinical judgment is often used in assessment and treatment planning, rarely has research examined its reliability, validity, or impact in practice settings. This study tailored the frequency of home visits in a prevention program for aggressive-disruptive children (n = 410; 56% minority) on the basis of 2 kinds of clinical judgment:…

A principal components analysis of the Teacher Rating Scale-Child (TRS-C) of the Behavior Assessment System for Children was conducted with a cross-sectional cohort of 659 children in Grades 1 to 5. A predictive validity study was then conducted with a 2-year longitudinal sample of 206 children. The results suggested that scores from the resulting…

A major advance in the field of reading over the past 15 years has been the development and validation of screening measures that can detect with reasonable accuracy those kindergartners and first graders likely to experience difficulty in learning to read. Increasingly, these students now receive additional instructional support during the…

To examine the predictive utility of three scales provided in the released database of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (international plausible values, standardized percent correct score, and national Rasch score), information was obtained on the performance in state examinations in mathematics and science in 1996…

This study evaluated the validity of curriculum-based word problem-solving measures as indicators of proficiency in mathematics with a sample of 77 children in third grade. In the winter and spring of third grade, children completed a battery of general achievement tests in mathematics in addition to curriculum-based problem-solving and…

The predictive validity and utility of assessment procedures can be increased by adding predictors to the prediction supplied by general ability tests. Of Jensen's early work comes the suggestion of focusing on the cognitive ability short-term memory (STM), especially for low-"g" Black children. Meta-analysis convincingly shows high…

Curriculum-based measures have been validated for use in evaluating reading, mathematics, and writing skills (Marston, 1989). Despite its common use by school psychologists (Wilson & Reschly, 1996), the relationship between the Woodcock Johnson-Revised and curriculum-based measures of writing has not been evaluated. This study investigated the…

The purpose of this study was to compare different statistical and methodological approaches to standard setting and determining cut scores using R-CBM and performance on high-stakes tests. One thousand seven hundred and sixty-six students were followed longitudinally from first through third grades using R-CBM benchmark assessment. In addition,…

This study evaluates the validity of two aggression scales for predicting observations of malicious or disruptive behavior at school. Subgroups of a sample of 1,560 children (age 8.6 plus or minus 1.5 years) were assessed using (a) peer nominations of aggression, (b) teacher reports on the Teacher Report Form (TRF) of the Child Behavior Checklist…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS), a teacher-rating instrument of interactive play behaviors for early childhood, was valid for urban, low-income children in kindergarten. The PIPPS demonstrated construct validity, and yielded three dimensions of interactive peer play: Play Interaction,…