These are the appendices for the report "The Effects of an Academic Language Program on Student Reading Outcomes." This study investigated WordGen Elementary, a program designed to improve fourth- and fifth-grade students' ability to understand and communicate academic language and their general reading skill. The program provider…

Student well-being has emerged as a topic of considerable interest to researchers and educators. Recent work has sought to examine relationships between measures of student well-being and other constructs such as academic achievement, physical health, relationships with peers, and engagement in learning. Reading assessment and context…

Over the past eight years, through examinations of school-administered reading assessments, Springboard has demonstrated internally that the average Springboard Summer scholar improves in reading during the program. Several partner school districts have compared Springboard scholars to their non-participating counterparts and found that, on…

We present two types of validity evidence to support inferences and decisions about use of easyCBMs in relation to state testing programs. The first type involves the use of Benchmarks in reading to use in making predictions of performance on the Smarter Balanced (SB) test. These predictions can be made both well in advance (several months) or…

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, causing one of the largest disruptions to schooling in history. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented challenges for education research and large-scale assessments of student populations. Both schools and researchers were forced to modify…

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) is an international comparative study of student performance in reading literacy at the fourth grade. PIRLS 2016 marks the fourth iteration of the study, which has been conducted every 5 years since 2001. New to the PIRLS assessment in 2016, ePIRLS provides a computer-based extension to…

Education has faced unprecedented disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic; evidence about the subsequent effect on children is of crucial importance. We use data from an oral reading fluency (ORF) assessment--a rapid assessment taking only a few minutes that measures a fundamental reading skill--to examine COVID's effects on children's reading…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has periodically published reports using results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to compare the proficiency standards states set for their students. Since standards vary across states, the results of the various state assessments cannot be used to directly compare…

These are the technical notes for "Mapping State Proficiency Standards onto the NAEP Scales: Results From the 2017 NAEP Reading and Mathematics Assessments." The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has periodically published reports using results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to compare the…

The Internet has become the primary source for obtaining information at work, at home, and for school. Because Internet reading increasingly is becoming one of the central ways students are acquiring information, in 2016, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was extended to include ePIRLS--an innovative assessment of online…

This study finds that, breaking with decades of slow improvement, U.S. reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other assessments have seen historic declines since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards six years ago. This descriptive analysis is designed to…

This report summarises Year 6 pupils' attainment in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) survey of 2016 in Northern Ireland and explores the context of that attainment. PIRLS is an international comparison study of reading at ages 9-10. PIRLS has a five-yearly cycle. Northern Ireland took part in PIRLS for the second time…

There is strong theoretical support for oral reading fluency (ORF) as an essential building block of reading proficiency. The current and standard ORF assessment procedure requires that students read aloud a grade-level passage (˜ 250 words) in a one-to-one administration, with the number of words read correctly in 60 seconds constituting their…

Parental involvement is seen as one of the most malleable factors of the student's home situation, which makes it a relevant subject for schools, educational policies, and research. Though many studies have researched its role in student achievement, effects are not univocal. It is difficult to tell whether these inconsistent results are caused by…

The current study aimed to explore the COVID-19 impact on the reading achievement growth of Grade 3-5 students in a large urban school district in the U.S. and whether the impact differed by students' demographic characteristics and instructional modality. Specifically, using administrative data from the school district, we investigated to what…