The National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE, 2005) defines response to intervention (RTI) as the practice of providing high-quality instruction and intervention based on a student's needs, changing instruction and/or goals through frequent monitoring of progress, and applying the student response data to important…

Although millions of dollars and weeks of instructional time are spent nationally on testing students, educators often have little information on how to choose appropriate assessments of adolescent reading for informing instruction. This guide is designed to meet that need, by drawing together evidence about nine of the most commonly-used,…

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…

Discusses several new educational assessment procedures implemented in Illinois and Michigan school districts. (MM)

To help teachers, policy analysts, and others understand the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Assessment in Reading, this journal issue presents the objectives and examples of how students in grades 4, 8, and 12 will be assessed. The issue discusses NAEP's view of reading; key features of the assessment; reading purposes;…

This guidebook puts testing in proper perspective as one aspect of evaluation and leads the test user through a practical discussion about selecting and developing valid, reliable tests. Its primary purpose is to assist classroom teachers, reading consultants, and school administrators in making decisions about measuring student reading…

This guide lists 64 commercially prepared English language arts inventories to assist educators in attaining results as stated in the Illinois Right to Read Initiative Best Practice #2: Assessment to Inform Instruction. The inventories in this guide are offered as another resource and are not meant to take the place of ongoing classroom assessment…

Drawing on work from a number of disciplines, this volume brings together experimental and theoretical information relevant to the problems of assessing children's reading comprehension. After a short introduction, the first section defines reading comprehension, presenting theoretical issues intended to provide an understanding of what is being…

As a preliminary version of the rationale and content for the English-language arts portion of the "Survey of Academic Skills: Grade 12," this booklet describes elements of the new reading and editing tests to be used to complement a direct writing assessment in this part of the 1987-88 California Assessment Program (CAP). After a brief…

This article explains how teachers can construct curriculum-based assessments (CBA), using state academic standards, to measure the reading skills and progress of elementary students with mild disabilities. Two mini-cases illustrate the creation of CBA test items based on individual educational goals and the Indiana Academic Standards. (Contains…

The limitations of standardized tests of reading ability in young children are examined and authentic assessment alternatives, including multiple measures of student learning and the close interaction of assessment and teaching, are identified. Examples of authentic classroom assessments are detailed for emergent readers, beginning readers, and…

This article focuses on strategies children can use to foster their reading comprehension and develop metacognitive skills. The article discusses crucial aspects of reading comprehension, the authentic assessment of strategic reading, alternative methods of assessing reading strategies and metacognition, and promoting thinking with literacy…

This sampler discusses California's English-language arts assessment program and presents examples of high school reading assessments, writing assessments, and writing prompts. The first section of the sampler takes an integrated look at Year One of the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). The second section presents the scoring guide for…

This sampler discusses California's English-language arts assessment program and presents examples of elementary school reading assessments, writing assessments, and writing prompts. The first section of the sampler takes an integrated look at Year One of the California Learning Assessment System. The second section presents the scoring guide for…

This sampler discusses California's English-language arts assessment program and presents examples of high school reading assessments, writing assessments, and writing prompts. The first section of the sampler takes an integrated look at the California's new English-language arts assessment. The second section presents the scoring guide for…