Assessing student achievement over multiple years is complicated by students' memberships in shifting upper-level nesting structures. These structures are manifested in (1) annual matriculation to different classrooms and (2) mobility between schools. Failure to model these shifting upper-level nesting structures may bias the inferences…

Vertical scales are frequently developed using common item nonequivalent group linking. In this design, one can use upper-grade, lower-grade, or mixed-grade common items to estimate the linking constants that underlie the absolute measurement of growth. Using the Rasch model and a dataset from Curriculum Associates' i-Ready Diagnostic in math in…

Coping Power (CP) is a preventive intervention that focuses on reducing child externalizing problems. Although it is typically delivered in a group format (GCP), individually-delivered CP (ICP) has produced greater mean reductions in externalizing problems. However, standard analysis of randomized trials loses individual-level information…

Michigan's Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP) is a state-funded pre-K program that serves at risk four-year-old children across the state. Utilizing longitudinal data from 1,394 children in a mid-sized urban school district, we conducted regression analyses and piecewise linear growth models to examine the growth trajectory of GSRP children and…

While working memory (WM) is a powerful predictor for children's school outcomes, autistic children are more likely to experience delays. This study compared autistic children and their neurotypical peers' WM development over their elementary school years, including relative growth and period of plasticity. Using a nationally-representative…

Dynamic Measurement Modeling (DMM) is a recently-developed measurement framework for gauging developing constructs (e.g., learning capacity) that conventional single-timepoint tests cannot assess. The current project developed a person-specific DMM Trajectory Deviance Index (TDI) that captures the aberrance of an individual's growth from the…

This study investigated the role of early general knowledge in English reading growth of bilingual and monolingual students in the elementary years by using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class data set. The analyses of latent growth models showed that the estimated gap in English reading between students who started school…

Prior research on the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), a computer-adaptive test distributed by the Northwest Evaluation Association, has primarily focused on the Reading MAP for screening/benchmarking in elementary grades. The purpose of this study was to explore the functional form of growth and the extent to which student variability in…

The piecewise latent growth models (PWLGMs) can be used to study changes in the growth trajectory of an outcome due to an event or condition, such as exposure to an intervention. When there are multiple outcomes of interest, a researcher may choose to fit a series of PWLGMs or a single parallel-process PWLGM. A comparison of these models is…

We used the Stanford education data archive (SEDA) data to examine the heterogeneity among urban school districts in the United States. The SEDA 2.1 includes data sets on students' mathematics (Math) and English language arts (ELA) achievement from 2008 to 2014 at the district level. Growth mixture modeling was used to uncover the underlying…

This study evaluated the forecasting accuracy of trend estimation methods applied to time-series data from computer adaptive tests (CATs). Data were collected roughly once a month over the course of a school year. We evaluated the forecasting accuracy of two regression-based growth estimation methods (ordinary least squares and Theil-Sen). The…

Student growth percentiles (SGPs) are currently used by several states and school districts to provide information about individual students as well as to evaluate teachers, schools, and school districts. For SGPs to be defensible for these purposes, they should be reliable. In this study, we examine the amount of systematic and random error in…

We evaluate the feasibility of estimating test-score growth with a gap year in testing data, informing the scenario when state testing resumes after the 2020 COVID-19-induced test stoppage. Our research design is to simulate a gap year in testing using pre-COVID-19 data--when a true test gap did not occur--which facilitates comparisons of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the technical features of slopes produced from the curriculum-based measurement in writing (CBM-W) word dictation task. Seventy-nine elementary students in the U.S. Midwest with intensive learning needs responded to weekly word dictation probes across 20 weeks; responses were scored for correct letter…

Monitoring the progress of student learning is an important part of teachers' data-based decision making. One such tool that can equip teachers with information about students' learning progress throughout the school year and thus facilitate monitoring and instructional decision making is learning progress assessments. In practical contexts and…