Many seem to believe that researcher-made tests are unnecessary, if not inappropriate, for evaluating reading comprehension interventions. We suggest that this view reflects a zeitgeist in which researcher-made (proximal) tests that align with the researchers' interventions are closely scrutinized and often devalued, whereas commercially developed…

The TOWRE-2 was developed to provide an efficient measure of two essential wordlevel reading skills, sight word reading and phonetic decoding skills. The Sight Word Efficiency (SWE) subtest assesses the number of real words that an individual can read from a vertical list within 45 s. This subtest is designed to measure the size of an individual's…

Notes that, while the test is not recommended for children at the lower and extreme upper levels, it does provide a valid and reliable measure of some of the abilities that may be involved in the reading behaviors of five- and six-year-old children. (FL)

This study, involving 131 students in grades ten, eleven, and twelve, investigated the effects of order of administration of subtests on scores from the Nelson-Denny Reading Test. Results indicated that order of administration had no significant effect on scores from the vocabulary subtest or on the total test score, but subjects taking the…

Discusses passage content and style, accessibility of the passages, their completeness, the extent to which the items are passage-dependent, and the extent to which additional knowledge is required to answer the questions on reading comprehension tests and exercises. (TO)

Describes a dozen ways in which reading tests are at variance in their demands with the demands of reading as it occurs in everyday life. Suggests that these sources of variance render reading tests considerably less valid as measures of real world reading behavior than most people want to believe. (RS)

Describes a school board's decision to employ a standardized reading proficiency test despite the fact that the test was proven to be passage independent and thus did not measure reading comprehension. (DD)

Suggests reading comprehension exercises, especially on lower reading levels, fail to test the pupil's understanding of the material read. (MM)

Notes that while across large groups of students two tests may be highly correlated, specific characteristics of tests may interact with specific characteristics of students to yield differences in scores for one individual on two or more tests. (FL)

Reports that tenth-grade students far exceeded chance mean scores on the Stanford Test of Academic Skills when given passage-out components (the publisher's questions without the accompanying reading passages); concludes that the results lend support to concerns regarding the valid measurement of reading comprehension. (GT)

Discusses research on the National Curriculum Key Stage Two reading tests for years 1998, 1999 and 2000. Shows that in 1999 and 2000 the reading tests were progressively easier: the number of questions requiring higher-order reading skills, particularly those of inference and deduction, decreased each year, while the number of questions requiring…

A review of public demand for accountability uncovers three types of educational assessment problems: demand for valid reading measures, need for a broader range of assessments, and value of assessments for various audiences. Integration of the various types of assessments is recommended. (SK)

Standardized reading tests are likely to provide an inaccurate assessment of reading comprehension for deaf students due to the lack of test coaching and test taking skills; item irrelevancy; and the difficulty of test directions. Testing alternatives include parent and teacher observation of students and qualitative evaluations of reading skills…

Reports a study of children's responses to a passage-dependent reading comprehension test. (HTH)