Test-based accountability as well as value-added asessments and much experimental and quasi-experimental research in education rely on achievement tests to measure student skills and knowledge. Yet, we know little regarding fundamental properties of these tests, an important example being the extent of measurement error and its implications for…

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that allows countries to compare outcomes of learning as students near the end of compulsory schooling. PISA core assessments measure the performance of 15-year-old students in mathematics, science, and reading literacy every 3 years. Coordinated by…

We examined the degree to which child, family, and treatment variables predicted treatment outcomes for reading and math achievement and oppositional behavior in a sample of 135 young children (105 boys and 30 girls). All of the participants met "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision"…

This meta-analysis summarizes research on the effects of a comprehensive, interactive web-based software (AXXX) on the development of reading competencies among kindergarteners and elementary students. Findings from seven randomized control trials and quasi-experimental studies undertaken in a variety of contexts across Canada, Australia and Kenya…

This article presents findings of an efficacy trial examining the effect of a multitiered instruction and intervention model on first grade at-risk students' reading outcomes. Schools (N = 16) were randomly assigned to the treatment or control condition. In the fall of Grade 1, students were assigned to an instructional tier on the basis of…

This report examines the implementation and effects of the academic summer program for middle school students offered by Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL). BELL's middle school program serves rising sixth- through eighth-grade students who are performing one to two years below grade level. The goals of the program are to increase students'…

The study was implemented in the Title I Marinette School District using a randomized experimental design and parallel quasi experimental design spanning three grades 1-3 in 3 district elementary schools. The Remediation Plus Intervention is a multi-sensory, systematic synthetic phonics curriculum for all ages of students who struggle with…

"The Right Trajectory" brings to the forefront an often-overlooked voice in the debate about new state assessments developed in consortia: that of the best teachers in the country. This research suggests, despite challenges still to overcome, that these front-line experts believe that the new consortia tests are an improvement on the…

This study examines the effect of 30 min of small group explicit instruction on reading outcomes for first-grade Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) at risk of reading difficulties. Participants were 78 ELs from seven schools who were receiving Spanish only, or Spanish and English, whole group reading instruction in first grade. Students were…

Research on written language comprehension has generally assumed that the phonological properties of a word have little effect on sentence comprehension beyond the processes of word recognition. Two experiments investigated this assumption. Participants silently read relative clauses in which two pairs of words either did or did not have a high…

In this article, we consider estimation of parameters of random effects models from samples collected via complex multistage designs. Incorporation of sampling weights is one way to reduce estimation bias due to unequal probabilities of selection. Several weighting methods have been proposed in the literature for estimating the parameters of…

Many reading comprehension measures require the student to read silently. When students read silently, important information (e.g., consistent reading errors) may not be identified. It may also be difficult to detect a student who is choosing not to read the passage. For this reason, investigating whether there is a significant difference in…

This article describes a social and emotional learning intervention, the "Responsive Classroom"[R] (RC) approach, which is designed to produce classroom environments conducive to learning. It summarizes a new body of research describing the efficacy of the RC approach. One component of the RC approach is the Morning Meeting. This article…

This study examined the effects of an intervention with a multicomponent reading game on the development of reading skills in 60 Dutch primary school children with special educational needs. The game contains evidence-based reading exercises and is based on principles of applied gaming. Using a multiple baseline approach, we tested children's…

Why has large-scale standardised testing attracted such a bad press? Why has pedagogic benefit to be derived from test results been downplayed? The paper investigates this question by first surveying the pros and cons of testing in the literature, and goes on to examine educators' responses to standardised, large-scale tests in a sample of low…