Open-ended verbal creativity assessments are commonly administered in psychological research and in educational practice to elementary-aged children. Children's responses are then typically rated by teams of judges who are trained to identify original ideas, hopefully with a degree of inter-rater agreement. Even in cases where the judges are…

This study details the construction of parameters for generating subskill mastery math measures to be used for screening, intervention planning, progress monitoring, and proximal program evaluation. Parameters for generating assessment measures were built and tested to verify initial equivalence of generated measures using potential digits correct…

Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to reflect on and process the sounds of spoken language and to conduct mental operations on the units that represent them, that is, phonemes. This study intended to examine the descriptive and psychometric properties of the phonemic awareness of schoolers test assessment (PASTA), a new tool that assesses…

In this study we evaluated the performance of the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) in a sample of 189 students in Grades 3 and 6 who attended a middle-tier private school in Karachi, Pakistan, where the medium of instruction was English (L2) and the majority language was Urdu (L1). We took a holistic approach and employed several…

This study aims to establish a Turkish version of the Children's Inventory of Anger Scale (ChIA) developed by Nelson and Finch (2000) to evaluate the intensity of anger experienced in potentially anger-provoking situations in children. The research sample consists of 502 primary and secondary school students attending their education in Hatay…

While research suggests that mathematical modeling is accessible to elementary grade students, questions remain about how to assess modeling competency. Our research addresses this need through the systemic design and empirical testing of a Mathematical Modeling Student Assessment (MMSA) for elementary grades 3 through 5. Research questions focus…

Developing tools to identify students' misconceptions about basic biology concepts is necessary. Therefore, a two-tier diagnostic test was developed to determine such misconceptions in primary school (3rd-4th Grade) students. The test content includes two-tiered multiple-choice questions addressing common misconceptions found in the literature on…

We used multivariate generalizability theory to examine the reliability of hand-scoring and automated essay scoring (AES) and to identify how these scoring methods could be used in conjunction to optimize writing assessment. Students (n = 113) included subsamples of struggling writers and non-struggling writers in Grades 3-5 drawn from a larger…

Both school and district administrators use the results of standardized, large-scale tests to inform decisions about the need for, or success of, educational programs and interventions. However, test results at the school level are subject to random fluctuations due to changes in cohort, test items, and other factors outside of the school's…

Reading motivation is an important contributor to reading achievement. Students with higher levels of motivation tend to outperform those with lower levels. Reading motivation is a dynamic, situational, context-dependent trait that can vary in children over time and across tasks. Teachers have a valuable opportunity to support students' reading…

Student growth percentiles (SGPs) are currently used by several states and school districts to provide information about individual students as well as to evaluate teachers, schools, and school districts. For SGPs to be defensible for these purposes, they should be reliable. In this study, we examine the amount of systematic and random error in…

Reading motivation is multidimensional and a critical contributor to students' reading comprehension skill. Its multidimensionality is problematic, as there is currently no consensus on the dimensions underlying reading motivation, which are being tested through a variety of instruments that lack statistical validation. Our goal was to discuss the…

This study examined the classification accuracy for subskill mastery measures administered in mathematics for students in kindergarten and Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 at fall (n = 564) and winter (n = 602) screening. In addition, response to classwide math intervention was examined as another layer of screening for students in kindergarten and Grades 1,…

Modern societal functions for meeting basic needs contribute to the lack of understanding many Americans have about agriculture's connection to human health and environmental quality. Consequently, this limited understanding has produced a need to measure agricultural literacy to develop programming or enhance existing agricultural educational…

Today, emoji have become a popular option for anchoring the categories of Likert-type scales applied to not only adults but also children. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of category labeling with emoji by comparing the psychometric properties of the emoji- and verbal-anchored versions of the mathematics motivation scale…