The importance of accurate reading assessment data cannot be overstated. Data is used to make decisions that directly impact student learning. The problem this study addressed was that 66% of fourth-grade students in Missouri were scoring below grade level on reading achievement assessments (NAEP, 2019). However, most high-stakes reading…

According to the RAND model framework, reading comprehension test performance is influenced by readers' reading skills or reader characteristics, test properties, and their interactions. However, little empirical research has systematically compared the impacts of reader characteristics, test properties, and reader-test interactions across…

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) can be used to score oral reading fuency (ORF) assessments to ameliorate current inadequacies (e.g., administration errors, high opportunity cost), and represents an important part of a larger solution to improve traditional ORF. But more research is needed on how ASR performs for diverse student groups. The…

Background: Research has suggested that one of the most important variables for the development of reading comprehension is the home literacy environment, composed of the literacy interface and what is known as the limiting environment. The current study investigated Spanish children's reading comprehension in relation to these two dimensions.…

This study investigated the relationship between listening comprehension and reading comprehension to determine if environmental factors might be contributing to a possible change in the equalization age for these two comprehension modalities from what was theorized by Thomas Sticht. The study employed a counterbalanced design to measure the…

Although literacy achievement has improved in Chile, adolescents' underperformance in reading comprehension is still a serious concern. In English, core academic-language skills (CALS) have been found to significantly predict reading comprehension, even controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge. CALS are high-utility language skills that…

Recent studies indicate that examiners make a number of intentional and unintentional errors when administering reading assessments to students. Because these errors introduce construct-irrelevant variance in scores, the fidelity of test administrations could influence the results of evaluation studies. To determine how assessment fidelity is…

This study examines a problem that many mainstream teachers face today: how to successfully improve reading comprehension for English language learners (ELLs) in an English-only environment. The researcher examines both the academic and psychosocial effects of the Transactional Literature Circles (TLC) programme on a treatment group of 75 fourth…

As the ongoing national indicator of what American students know and can do, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through The Nation's Report Card, the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students perform in…

The relationship of reading performance to difficulty level of material was the focus of this study. Participants in the study were 83 fourth graders from four urban schools. Each student was administered passages at different levels of challenge (independent, instructional, frustration) based on word identification accuracy. Passages were scored…

"Reading Mastery," one of several curriculum components that constitute the "Direct Instruction" curriculum from SRA/McGraw-Hill, is designed to provide systematic instruction in reading to students in grades K-6. "Reading Mastery," which can be used as an intervention program for struggling readers, as a supplement…

The Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was developed to help improve the teaching of reading and the acquisition of reading skills around the world, and was approved by the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) General Assembly as an essential component of the IEA's regular cycle of core studies,…

This document sets forth the design of a test of reading comprehension. The exam requires students to read passages of written English text--either literary or informational--and to answer questions about what they have read. In some cases, the questions deal with facts in the text or vocabulary. In other cases, a complete answer requires a clear…

The Informational Text Reading Inventory (ITRI) was created when the Center for Innovation in Assessment (CIA) observed that students in grade four experience a significant drop in performance in all of their subject areas. CIA researched solutions and identified the critical issue as the students' struggle to apply the reading skills they have…