Young learners' language aptitude is understudied due to a lack of tests covering this period of life. Young learners, in contrast with adults, are still acquiring their L1. Consequently, a language-dependent aptitude test should be carefully designed for it to be valid. An additional challenge is found when the young learners who are to take the…

The Hybrid Text Comprehension cloze (HyTeC-cloze) (Kleijn et al. Lang Test 36:553--572, 2019) is a procedure developed for the Dutch language that has been proved to be a valid and reliable measure of text comprehension beyond the sentence level. Given its advantages, including its relatively rapid construction and scoring and performance compared…

Introduction: The assessment of student motivation can be a powerful tool for understanding the factors that can influence the school environment, where students, families, teachers, psychologists or administration can develop interventions related to the improvement of learning through the motivational style based on the Self-Determination Theory…

Research Findings: Universal screening is the first stage in identifying students at risk for reading difficulties within a Response to Intervention model. However, there is a lack of validated screening tools for assessing reading abilities in first-grade students from Spain. This pilot study examines the technical adequacy, classification…

Emotion knowledge has attracted scientific interest in recent years due to its relevance to children's adjustment. Although there is some controversy as to its definition and components, the term is often used to describe the set of abilities to process emotional information. We need rigorous tools to assess it in multiple languages and contexts.…

Clinicians, educators, and researchers alike continue to struggle without adequate and functional tools to measure language proficiency in bilingual populations. Language proficiency refers to the ability of an individual to use a language. However, the ways in which proficiency is classified are inconsistent and potentially invalid. Proficiency…

The present study is a systematic review of school climate measures developed for a Spanish-speaking K-12 population. Four instruments were included in the analyses representing data of 9,236 students with a mean of sample size of 2,309 students. Evidences for test content and internal structure were the most frequent representation of…

The present study analyzes the psychometric properties of a Spanish-adapted version of the Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS). This instrument allows teachers to perform a screening of children with possible working memory (WM) difficulties, putting them at risk of academic underachievement. A sample of children age 8.5 to 12.33 years old was…

The development of novel educational assessment models founded on item response theory (IRT), as well as software tools designed to implement these models, has contributed to the surge in computerized adaptive tests (CATs). The distinguishing characteristic of CATs is that the sequence of items on a test progressively adapts to the performance…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was (a) to examine the underlying components or factor structure of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA; Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, Goldstein, & Bedore, 2014) sentence repetition task and (b) to examine the relationship between Spanish-English speaking children's sentence repetition and…

This article presents evidence for a validity argument on the ACTFL Assessment of Performance Toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) tests (Interpersonal Listening/Speaking, Presentational Writing, Interpretive Listening, and Interpretive Reading) by summarizing an analysis of the 2014 test data from examinations administered in three languages…

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization promoted the creation of a model instrument for individual assessment of students' foundational writing skills in the Spanish language that was based on a literature review and existing writing tools and assessments. The purpose of the "Early Grade Writing Assessment"…

Substantial research exists to support the use of reading curriculum-based measures (R-CBMs) for screening and progress monitoring in schools; however, nearly all of this work has been done in English. The changing demographics of students who attend public school includes children who speak other languages. The purpose of this study was to…

International large-scale assessments of achievement often have a large degree of differential item functioning (DIF) between countries, which can threaten score equivalence and reduce the validity of inferences based on comparisons of group performances. It is important to understand potential sources of DIF to improve the validity of future…

This study describes the development and validation of the Extract the Base test (ETB), which assesses derivational morphological awareness. Scores on this test were validated for 580 monolingual students and 373 Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) in third through fifth grade. As part of the validation of the internal structure,…