This paper discusses practical implications of formative assessment effectiveness research in grades one through six. Formative assessment effectiveness is a timely topic for state and district leaders as they develop implementation plans for Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), including their approaches to supporting school-based practitioners…

Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) are increasingly being used in evaluations of teacher effectiveness. This study investigates two properties of SGPs: 1) SGP sensitivity to reference group characteristics such as sample size, free and reduced lunch (FRL) status, and English language learner (ELL) status; and 2) variation in score changes across…

This paper discusses the need for new model and approach to solve the problem of illiteracy of the most backward section of the society-women among scheduled and other backward classes. The empirical support for the study is testing, interview and observation conducted on the present status of 100 from among 1,500 adult learners who attended a…

Our current capacity to understand or provide a context for interpreting the size of an effect in education program evaluation is limited. To address the problem, this study proposes a time-indexed effect size metric (d') to estimate how long it would take for an "untreated" control group to reach the treatment group outcome in terms…

In October 2010, WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) won an i3 "Validation" grant to scale up and validate the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) model in three core secondary content area classes: U.S. history, biology, and English language arts. SLI's proposal stated two goals. Goal 1: To transform academic literacy teaching and…

A reading program evaluation was conducted by the school district of Eugene, Oregon, during the 1976-1977 school year. Three major questions were to be answered: (1) Are the district's elementary reading programs effective according to the district's reading scope and sequence? (2) What makes effective programs effective? (3) If programs are not…

A study investigated whether a teacher-pupil conference could serve as a vehicle for gathering data from children on the self-assessment of learning. The "Worksamples Interview" (a 10-item questionnaire that focuses on different dimensions of children's work) was used with 93 children in Years 4, 5, and 6 in one school in a large city in…

A two-phase investigation of characteristics associated with student achievement in elementary and secondary reading centers in the Houston (Texas) Independent School District is described and evaluated in this paper. After presenting background information about the centers, the paper describes the first phase of the investigation, which revealed…

Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) data from one rural school system covering four groups of children for a consecutive three year period was used to study the impact of transient students entering the school system. The analysis compared native children (those on roll since the first year) with transient children added to or deleted…

Two approaches to the study of long-term effects of different prekindergarten (pre-K) programs in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District (AISD) were studied. In one study, limited English proficient (LEP) students attending AISD kindergartens in 1981-82, 1982-83, and 1983-84 were followed to see if those who attended pre-K showed an…

This study reports the preliminary results from a field test of the College-readiness Performance Assessment System (C-PAS), a large-scale, 6th-12th grade criterion-referenced assessment system that utilizes classroom-embedded performance tasks to measure student progress toward the development of key cognitive skills associated with success in…

Final evaluation of a 3-year project to use microcomputers to improve the reading and language skills of Limited English Proficient (LEP) Native American students revealed that there was significant growth evidenced in over 75% of the reading subscale groupings as measured by the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (*CTBS). Subjects were 114…

Evaluation at the end of the first year of a 3-year project to use microcomputers to improve the reading and language skills of Limited English Proficient (LEP) Native American students revealed that the major objective was not reached, but there were achievements nonetheless. Lakota (Sioux) children constitute 10% of the Rapid City, South Dakota…

This study investigated the relationship between and among the results of three types of reading assessments in the first grade: a standardized reading test (the Stanford Achievement Tests); an informal reading inventory (the Classroom Reading Inventory); and teacher judgment of student rank in reading achievement. The study included 165 first…

Curriculum-based assessment (CBA) and curriculum-based measurement (CBM) procedures are increasingly being utilized to assess student academic skills for educational decision-making, including screening, progress monitoring, entitlement and intervention planning. At the same time, school districts are increasingly compelled to administer local and…