The grades K-2 Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) Reading Assessment (FRA) consists of computer-adaptive alphabetic and oral language screening tasks that provide a Probability of Literacy Success (PLS) linked to grade-level performance (i.e., the 40th percentile) on the word reading (in kindergarten) or reading comprehension (in grades…

Common Core Reading Standard 10 not only prescribes the difficulty of texts students should become able to read, but also the difficulty diet of texts schools should ask their students to read across the school year. The use of quantitative text-assessment tools in the implementation of this standard warrants an examination into the validity of…

The purpose of this study was to examine utility of a brief experimental analysis (BEA) in determining effective sight word interventions for a student with a history of difficulty with acquiring sight word recognition. Ten interventions were compared in a BEA. Following the BEA, an extended analysis was conducted that compared the two most…

The Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency (TOSCRF; Hammill, Wiederholt, & Allen, 2006), as its name implies, is designed to measure contextualized silent reading fluency in students aged 7 to 18. Its purposes are to identify good and poor readers, to measure contextual fluency, and to monitor reading development. The TOSCRF measures how…

The aim of this study is to explore the possible relationships between the readiness and reading and writing performances of a group of children who are first graders in an elementary school in Turkey. The states of children in terms of school readiness, sound-letter relationships, and phonemic awareness were determined individually during the…

To help states and districts make informed decisions about the professional development (PD) they implement to improve reading instruction, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned the Early Reading PD Interventions Study to examine the impact of two research-based PD interventions for reading instruction: (1) a content-focused teacher…

This document reports on the impacts on student achievement for four supplemental reading curricula that use similar overlapping instructional strategies designed to improve reading comprehension in social studies and science text. Fifth-grade reading comprehension for each of three commercially-available curricula (Project CRISS, ReadAbout, and…

The National Reading Panel admits its evaluation report on phonics is seriously flawed as to organization, methodology, appropriateness of research base, generalizability of results, reliability, validity, and accuracy of data reported. However, an influential public-relations machine is promoting the study's favorable results as unvarnished…

Some of the problems and hazards associated with the use of standardized reading test scores in the formation and reformation of ability groups for reading instruction are discussed. (Author)

Argues that sensory screening does not identify children at risk for reading or learning disability, and that sensory training does not improve reading or learning. (RAE)

The first portion of this article describes the development and validation of a classroom observation measure. The goal of the measure was to assess the quality of reading instruction provided to first-grade English learners. We report the internal consistency reliability, interrater reliability, the development of empirically derived subscales,…

This paper compares two methods of establishing content validity, forced-choice judgmental review and a latent category judgmental review. It also compares content validity evidence with the results of a scale reliability analysis and makes recommendations of the two content validity procedures. Two different groups of graduate students enrolled…

The authors present results of a generalizability study of running record assessment. They conducted 2 decision studies to ascertain the number of raters and passages necessary to obtain a reliable estimate of a student's reading ability on the basis of a running record assessment. Ten teachers completed running record assessments of 10…

The study of curriculum-based measurement (CBM), involving 57 adults in a basic literacy program, found that narrative rather than expository passages exhibited higher reliability. Level of difficulty did not affect reliability. Validity data showed inconsistency between CBM and standardized test scores. The measures were sensitive to student…

This study presents preliminary findings from research developing an instructional quality assessment (IQA) toolkit that could be used to monitor the influence of reform initiatives on students' learning environments and to guide professional development efforts within a school or district. This report focuses specifically on the portion of the…