The use of standards-based classroom assessments to test English learners' language proficiency is increasingly prevalent in the United States and many other countries. In a large urban school district in California, for example, a classroom assessment is used to make high-stakes decisions about English learners' progress from one level to the…

This study provided 5 weeks of direct strategy instruction about narrative elements and relations in 4 first-grade classrooms (n = 83), all with materials that made minimal decoding demands on children's reading. Two comparison classrooms (n = 40) received comparable instruction on language development and poetry. A battery of assessments given at…

This paper defines Bayesian network models and examines their applications to IRT-based cognitive diagnostic modeling. These models are especially suited to building inference engines designed to be synchronous with the finer grained student models that arise in skills diagnostic assessment. Aspects of the theory and use of Bayesian network models…

The accuracy of achievement test score inferences largely depends on the sensitivity of scores to instruction focused on tested objectives. Sensitivity requirements are particularly challenging for standards-based assessments because a variety of plausible instructional differences across classrooms must be detected. For this study, we developed a…

Purpose: This study examined the association between cognitive functioning and completion of a durable power of attorney for health care. Design and Methods: Participants were from the Second Longitudinal Study on Aging (LSOA II), a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling persons who were at least 70 years of age at the time of…

In a qualitative, multiple case study, we explored the challenges and successes teachers encounter while participating in a professional development program aimed at improving their reading comprehension instruction so as to increase students' self-regulated use of comprehension strategies. We documented five fifth grade teachers' experiences as…

Educational assessment concerns inference about students' knowledge, skills, and accomplishments. Because data are never so comprehensive and unequivocal as to ensure certitude, test theory evolved in part to address questions of weight, coverage, and import of data. The resulting concepts and techniques can be viewed as applications of more…

Despite the increasing criticism of statistical significance testing by researchers, particularly in the publication of the 1994 American Psychological Association's style manual, statistical significance test results are still popular in journal articles. For this reason, it remains important to understand the logic of inferential statistics. A…

The clinical inference process in test interpretation is described so that people can more easily communicate about it, teach it, and learn it. Chapter 1 compares different levels (concrete, mechanical, and individualized) of interpretation of the same test. Chapter 2 offers examples of an often-neglected kind of data necessary for individualized…

Several specific maxims of English conversation that suggest interpersonal cooperation in the process of communication are applied to conversation in Japanese. The maxims concern implicature, a proposition implied in an utterance in a particular context but not expressly stated. It is proposed that: (1) while it is easy to overstate or exaggerate…

In 1993, under contract from the National Center for Education Statistics, the Educational Testing Service assessed the literacy proficiencies of a nationally representative sample of all adults, aged 16 and over, from nearly 27,000 homes. That assessment, the National Adult Literacy Survey, produced a profile of the English literacy skills of the…

This project addressed the question: What knowledge and processes enable individuals to construct and modify representations of novel, nonroutine problems? The theoretical goal was to extend the information-processing theory of problem solving to include processes that have been characterized as restructuring of problems and productive thinking by…

The effects of overt, covert, and summary practice conditions on four levels of learning were examined. One hundred twenty-two middle class sixth-grade students were randomly assigned to practice condition. Passages about energy sources were read by the students and oral reviews were directed according to treatment. The summary group was given a…

A program of paired, repeated reading was developed to improve the achievement in reading comprehension of 14 targeted third-grade students. The program had three basic objectives: (1) to increase literal comprehension by 25%; (2) to increase inference of main idea by 25%; and (3) to increase inference skills of drawing conclusions by 25%. The…

Individual differences in same-aged children's reasoning about effort and ability, as well as the consequences of different forms of reasoning in actual achievement situations, were investigated. It was hypothesized that different forms of children's reasoning would be related to different (helpless versus mastery-oriented) motivational patterns.…