When student achievement is assessed, we seek to elicit a student's maximum performance -- a goal requiring the assumption that the student is fully engaged. Otherwise, to the extent that disengagement occurs, test performance is likely to suffer. Effectively managing test-taking disengagement requires an understanding of the testing conditions…

Although there has been substantial research on the effects of test accommodations on students' performance, there has been far less research on students' use of embedded accommodations and other accessibility supports at the item and whole test level in operational testing programs. Data on embedded accessibility supports from digital logs…

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the impact of i-Ready Personalized Instruction on math achievement, as measured by SBA scores. We compared students in schools using i-Ready Personalized Instruction school-wide (Treatment students) and students who only received i-Ready Diagnostic assessments and who were in schools only partially…

Background: Students vary in their initial achievement when they enter school and their rate of academic growth as they move through school. These differences have implications for classroom instruction and educational policy. Although previous research has examined initial achievement and growth differences, a gap remains in understanding how…

This study investigated the effects of Plickers use on rural students' learning outcomes through two case scenarios. In the first case scenario, the study adopted a preexperimental study method with a focus on comparing Plickers with traditional testing to examine rural students' learning attitudes toward Plickers. The participants were 24…

It is under debate whether the neural representation of numbers and letters might rely on distinct neural correlates, or on a mostly shared neural network. In the present study, a total of 47 children in fifth grade (Experiment 1) and sixth grade (Experiment 2) simply copied numbers and letters on a touch screen while brain activation changes were…

The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has a partnership with Questar Assessment Inc. (Questar) for the development of the 2020 Grades 3-8 English Language Arts Tests. Teachers from across the State work with NYSED in a variety of activities to ensure the validity and reliability of the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP). The 2020…

Virtual Environment for Social Information Processing (VESIP™) is a web-based social information processing assessment developed for youth in grades 3-7. VESIP was developed to address: (1) the broader assessment of social information processing in a variety of socially challenging situations; and (2) the need for technically strong and scalable…

The new research results on the online- testing method in the Latvian education system for a learning process assessment are presented. Data mining is a very important field in education because it helps to analyse the data gathered in various researches and to implement the changes in the education system according to the learning methods of…

Repeated measurements of student ability (i.e., progressing monitoring) is an essential element of informed decision-making when adjusting instruction. An important characteristic of progress monitoring measures is frequent administration to identify areas of concern and to evaluate academic growth. The purpose of this study was to determine if…

While recent studies find that contextual diversity (CD) is a better determinant of visual word recognition than token frequency, there is a dearth of work comparing contextual diversity and token frequency in developing readers. In two sets of character and lexical decision experiments we examined token frequency and contextual diversity effects…

Despite the importance of analytic text-based writing, relatively little is known about how to teach to this important skill. A persistent barrier to conducting research that would provide insight on best practices for teaching this form of writing is a lack of outcome measures that assess students' analytic text-based writing development and that…

Reading screening assessments help educators identify students who are at risk of reading and determine the need for intervention and supports. However, some schools screen and assess students more often than needed, and the additional information does not improve the accuracy of decisions. This may be especially true for students at the upper…

This study investigated fourth and fifth graders' metacognitive knowledge about writing and its relationship to writing performance to help identify areas that might be leveraged when designing effective writing instruction. Students' metacognitive knowledge was probed using a 30-minute informative writing prompt requiring students to teach their…

School closures induced by COVID-19 placed heightened emphasis on alternative ways to measure student learning besides in-person exams. We leverage the administration of phone-based assessments (PBAs) measuring numeracy and literacy for primary school children in Kenya, along with in-person standardized tests administered to the same students…