A Colorado elementary school used its assessment program to measure everything that affected student performance; they then changed or cut anything that did not improve achievement. Teachers routinely instructed and pretested each child at his/her achievement level. The result: high gains on the 1998 Colorado State Assessment. (MLH)

First and second grade public school teachers were trained through interactive video-conferencing to implement "Language Enrichment," an Orton-Gillingham-based literacy instruction. The effectiveness of the linguistically informed training was demonstrated by documenting the longitudinal third grade reading comprehension achievement of…

A study examined whether students coming from low income families perform less well on achievement tests than do students in general. Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test scores of fourth grade students coming from low income, rural Michigan homes were compared to overall schoolwide and statewide average scores for the period…

This document reports on the procedures and results of the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) testing program in changing from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS), administered to grades 1 through 7 from 1973-79, to the California Achievement Tests (CAT), Form C, administered in Spring 1980 to provide a continuous testing program from the elementary…

A longitudinal study reported in this document examines the effects of integration and the implementation of an open-classroom type program on first and second grade children from lower and middle class Israeli backgrounds. Data used to support the findings presented were obtained from the results of mathematics and reading achievement tests…

The "D" testing program, the fourth in a year-long series of test administrations, is summarized. As part of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study, reading and mathematics achievement was studied in second and fifth grade classes. The samples for the "D" testing were 97 second grade students out of l50 in the "A" testing, and 89 fifth grade…

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO COMPARE THE ACHIEVEMENT LEVELS OF BRITISH AND UNITED STATES ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN GRADES 1-6, OF VARYING ABILITY LEVELS, FROM BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS AT THE APPROXIMATE BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END OF THE ACADEMIC YEAR. ACHIEVEMENT ANALYSES WERE BASED PRIMARILY UPON SCORES EARNED ON THE…

The most significant findings and recommendations of the 1975 Oregon Statewide Reading Assessment are highlighted in this summary intended for a nontechnical audience. A criterion-referenced test was developed to test the reading achievement of fourth graders in the areas of word attack skills, comprehension skills, study skills and vocabulary…

The purpose of this study was to describe selected tests which have been used to yield instructional levels in reading; to examine the bases on which such tests have been designed in light of their relevance to instructional level; and to inspect the relation of test standards to selected methods of teaching reading in the elementary school. The…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of three basic demographic variables on reading test scores for students in the middle elementary grades. Limited English proficiency (LEP), race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (SES) were studied to determine their influence individually and in combination on performance in large-scale…

Northwest Evaluation Association regularly conducts studies of alignment between the RIT scale and the scales used for statewide achievement tests. In recent years, educational experts have put increasing emphasis on the need for triangulation of student achievement information in order to assure that important educational decisions are based on…

Beginning in 1999, all of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) had to be aligned with the Pennsylvania Academic Standards. This handbook describes the PSSA reading assessment. It contains samples and instructions for developing assessment items for grades 5, 8, and 11. Although designed for teachers, the Handbook is meant to be a…

Information is provided on the content standards and work to achieve them for mathematics in one Colorado school district and reading and writing in another. The six mathematics content standards of the Weld County school district are outlined for kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12), and performance standards are also described and illustrated…

Beginning in the 1992-93 school year, the North Carolina State Board of Education authorized administration of North Carolina-developed end-of-grade tests aligned with the state's "Standard Course of Study." These state-normed tests were administered to more than 568,000 students in grades 3 through 8 in 1998-99. End-of-course tests were…

This report presents findings from the evaluation of the second year of the professional services agreement between the Detroit, Michigan, Public Schools and Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc. Under a contract with the school system, Sylvan attempted to improve the reading achievement of low-achieving students in 10 Title 1 schools. The program…