About two years ago, Ohio's school district, like many other districts nationwide, was beginning to feel the first effects of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Reading scores at many of Ohio's elementary schools were unacceptably low, and one school in particular--Fairmount Park Elementary School--had been labeled as "in need of…

The longitudinal impacts on school change and student achievement of implementing varied Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models was investigated in 12 elementary schools in diverse geographic locations. Each school was individually matched and compared to a demographically similar control school on measures of school climate, teacher…

Kentucky's goal of reaching academic "proficiency" by 2014 illuminated 2002 reading test scores: 44.30% of middle and 71.25% of high school students scored below "proficient." The research question was, "Do teaching practices in schools with high reading achievement scores differ from teaching practices in schools with low…

During the school years, psychological test norms may be indexed by age or by grade. A number of studies have shown that using age-based norms appears to produce biases associated with grade assignment. Cahan and Cohen [Child Dev. 60 (1989) 1239-1249] showed that the effect of one grade was over twice the effect of 1 year of age for most verbal…

This study investigated factors related to score differences on computerized and paper-and-pencil versions of a series of primary K-3 reading tests. Factors studied included item and student characteristics. The results suggest that the score differences were more related to student than item characteristics. These student characteristics include…

Change in cognitive functioning is an important aspect of human aging and a key outcome in many medical conditions. However, cognitive change can rarely be measured directly, since prior cognitive data do not exist for most people. We examined the criterion validity and one-year stability of the difference between National Adult Reading Test…

English contains many nominals that would be absent in Chinese because Chinese makes greater use of "zero anaphora," which is an empty grammatical slot in a sentence standing for a previously mentioned referent. Native Chinese and native English speakers were compared in comprehending modified English passages from a standardized reading test with…

The goals of this study were to (a) develop an empirically based model regarding the development of fluent and automatic reading in the early elementary school years and (b) determine whether fluent text-reading skills provided benefits for reading comprehension beyond those accounted for by fluent word decoding. First-, second-, and third-grade…

This article discusses how President's Bush's proposals to expand educational accountability from the elementary and middle grades to high schools would mean more testing for teenagers, individual student plans to promote achievement, and financial incentives for teachers to help students meet their goals. Mr. Bush's campaign proposals, unveiled…

The purpose of this book is to introduce the research on readability, defined here as reading ease. The first part of the book covers how people read. A series of national literacy surveys show that the average person in the U.S. and most other countries are adults of limited reading skills. For example, the average adult in the U.S. reads at the…

The NAEP Validity Studies (NVS) Panel provides advice and recommendations to help insure the "validity" of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores. The primary objectives of NAEP tests are to accurately monitor the progress of defined groups of students over time and to measure valid differences in scores…

The sometimes poor performance of Career and Technical Education (CTE) concentrators on a state-mandated proficiency test is a major concern of CTE educators. This study examined whether (a) there are performance differences on state-mandated 11th-grade math and reading tests between CTE and non-CTE students with similar proficiency scores in the…

The literature on school absences has focused predominantly on the reasons for student truancy, or it has assessed only aggregate student absences in their effect on achievement. However, this study brings forth a new issue: the relationship between types of absences--excused versus unexcused--and school performance. With a quantitative model of…

More than three hundred assessment tools applicable for the evaluation of children and adults with specific learning disabilities in terms of age applicability, time to administer, and salient characteristics are briefly described. They are grouped into ten categories: Intelligence Tests, Preschool Readiness Tests, Motor, Sensory, and Language…

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) program is exploring a change in Section 3 of the TOEFL test that would replace the vocabulary subpart with additional reading comprehension questions. This study investigated the proposed revision in terms of the length and timing that would be necessary to address concerns of test speededness of…