Reading Achievement Scores Research Articles

Short-term predictive validity of cluster analytic and dimensional classification of child behavioral adjustment in school

A constructive debate over the classification of child psychopathology can be stimulated by investigating the validity of different classification approaches. We examined and compared the short-term predictive validity of cluster analytic and dimensional classifications of child behavioral adjustment in school using the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC; [Reynolds, C. R., and Kamphaus, R. W. (1992). Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC). Circle Pines, MN: AGS.]) Teacher Rating Scales for Children (TRS-C). We cluster analyzed 14 dimensional scores of children's behavior in first grade and identified seven clusters. Then we examined the predictive power of the dimensions and the clusters using a variety of school outcomes in second grade, including academic achievement scores in reading and math, absenteeism, discipline reports, and participation rates in pre-referral intervention. Both methods significantly predicted all school outcomes with similar magnitudes of effect sizes, but the dimensional approach was more powerful in predicting the outcomes except pre-referral intervention. Moreover, coherent group differences in the clusters were identified with respect to the school outcomes. This latter finding may suggest differentiated prognoses of cluster membership. The implications for future validation studies of alternative classification systems of child behavioral adjustment are discussed.

Charter Schools and Student Achievement in Florida

I utilize longitudinal data covering all public school students in Florida to study the performance of charter schools and their competitive impact on traditional public schools. Controlling for student-level fixed effects, I find achievement initially is lower in charters. However, by their fifth year of operation new charter schools reach a par with the average traditional public school in math and produce higher reading achievement scores than their traditional public school counterparts. Among charters, those targeting at-risk and special education students demonstrate lower student achievement, while charter schools managed by for-profit entities peform no differently on average than charters run by nonprofits. Controlling for preexisting traditional public school quality, competition from charter schools is associated with modest increases in math scores and unchanged reading scores in nearby traditional public schools.

Learning-related behaviors, cognitive skills, and ability grouping when schooling begins

We use ECLS-K data from a national sample of students to estimate the determinants and consequences of reading ability group placement in kindergarten and first grade. We find that prior test score performance is the strongest determinant of such placement, followed in magnitude by the teacher’s judgment of the student’s learning-related classroom behavior. These variables explain most of the race, gender, and social class differentials when students are placed into ability groups for the first time. Within kindergarten and first grade classes where grouping is used, placement into a higher group exerts a positive effect on student learning-related behavior and reading achievement. Ability group placement and the teacher’s assessment of student behavior both have significant effects on student’s growth in reading achievement, even net of their prior reading achievement scores. Such grouping takes individual and group-level performance differences that emerge during the preschool period and causes them to widen more than would otherwise be the case during the first 2 years of formal schooling.

Reading Miscues of College Students with and without Learning Disabilities

Using authentic materials, this study compared the oral reading miscues of 20 university students with reading related learning disabilities to 20 controls matched for age, gender, ethnicity, college GPA, reading achievement score, and college of major. All participants orally read two passages with different text structures from a college textbook. Miscues were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The students with learning disabilities miscued significantly more words in both passages than the controls (1058 to 137 words) and had a significantly higher percentage of loss-of- textual meaning miscues. This study provides evidence that reading decoding difficulties persist for students with learning disabilities even into college, and documents the reading decoding difficulties with authentic text rather than word lists.

Closing the Achievement Gap: A Structured Approach to Group Counseling

ABSTRACT This study evaluated the impact of a group counseling intervention on student academic and social performance. Twenty-five school counselors were trained to use a structured approach to small-group counseling with students scoring in the mid-to-low range in math and reading. The group intervention focused on improving student achievement and student success skills, which included academic, social, and self-management skills. Results indicated gains in reading and math achievement scores and in teacher-rated behavior related to student success skills with elementary and middle school students.

Children with Reading Disabilities: Does Dynamic Assessment Help in the Classification?

This study was conducted to determine whether the cognitive performance of reading disabled and poor readers can be separated under dynamic assessment procedures, and whether measures related to dynamic assessment add unique variance, beyond IQ, in predicting reading achievement scores. The sample consisted of 70 children (39 females and 31 males). Within this sample four groups of children were compared: children with reading disabilities ( n=12), children with math/reading disabilities ( n=19), poor readers ( n=14), and skilled readers ( n=25). Intelligence, reading and math tests, and verbal working memory (WM) measures were administered (presented under static and dynamic testing conditions). Two important findings emerged: (a) hierarchical regression analyses found that a dynamic assessment measure factor score contributed unique variance to predicting reading and mathematics, beyond what is attributed to verbal IQ and initial scores related to WM; and (b) poor readers and skilled readers were more likely to change and maintain their WM score gained under the dynamic testing conditions than children with reading disabilities or children with a combination of math/reading disabilities. Implications for a valid classification of reading disabilities are discussed.

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Accreditation:Impact on Elementary Student Performance

Currently, 848 Georgia public elementary schools that house third- and fifth-grades in the same building use the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) accreditation as a school improvement model. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether elementary schools that are SACS accredited increased their levels of academic achievement at a higher rate over a five-year period than elementary schools that were not SACS accredited as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). Independent variables included accreditation status, socioeconomic status (SES) of schools, and baseline scores of academic achievement. Dependent variables included mathematics and reading achievement scores. There was a statistically significant difference found when examining the SES of schools and baseline scores of the elementary schools. SACS accredited elementary schools had higher SES and higher baseline scores in third- and fifth grade mathematics and reading. However, the multiple regression model indicated no statistically significant differences in gain scores between SACS accredited and non-SACS accredited elementary schools in third- and fifth-grade mathematics and reading achievement during the five year period examined in this study.

Season of Birth Is Related to Child Retention Rates, Achievement, and Rate of Diagnosis of Specific LD

A sizable literature has demonstrated that the achievement of children in early elementary school is related to their season of birth: Those born in summer typically perform less well than those born in the fall. A small literature indicates that more children diagnosed with specific learning disabilities (SLD) are born in the summer. We have begun to explore the possibility that the same processes may account for both outcomes. In order to better understand these processes, the standardized achievement levels and rates of diagnosis of SLD for children born during each season were studied in one geographical area of the State of Georgia served by 28 school districts. Standardized achievement scores in reading, mathematics, and science were reliably lower for those born in the summer. Furthermore, there was a strong relationship between season of birth and the rate at which children received a diagnosis of SLD. Summer-born children were diagnosed with SLD at a higher rate than their peers. Four hypotheses for both the lower performance in the general school population and the greater rate of SLD diagnosis among these children are discussed.

Summer Reading and the Ethnic Achievement Gap

A number of studies have shown that low-income and minority students undergo larger summer reading losses than their middle-class and White classmates, and that reading is the only activity that is consistently related to summer learning. The purpose of this study was to explore whether reading books during summer vacation improved fall reading proficiency, and whether access to books increased the volume of summer reading. The results from the multivariate regression analyses suggest that the effect of reading 4 to 5 books on fall reading scores is potentially large enough to prevent a decline in reading achievement scores from the spring to the fall. Furthermore, children who reported easy access to books also read more books. The findings have implications for designing school-based summer reading programs and for conducting future experiments that confirm the correlational findings from this study.

Special education services and school performance in a regional cohort of low-birthweight infants at age nine.

Previous research has shown that low birthweight is a predictor of several adverse educational outcomes, including special educational placement, by middle school age. Most low-birthweight follow-up studies that have extended to school age have focused on very small infants-- < 1500 or < 1000 g; less is known of the school age outcomes for infants with only moderately low birthweight (1500-2000 g). This study examines the prevalence of special educational placement and the relationship of such placement to grade retention, verbal and performance scores on tests of general intelligence, reading and maths achievement scores and classroom hyperactivity among low-birthweight children. In a regional birth cohort of 1105 infants born between 1984 and 1987 and weighing 500-2000 g, 868 children were available for follow-up at age nine. Information on special education placement as well as grade retention, intelligence, academic achievement and classroom behaviour was available on 645 (74% completion rate). Nearly a third of the cohort was classified as needing special education. Special education placement followed a birthweight gradient, occurring among 29.3% of children with birthweights 1500-2000 g, among 32.5% in children 1000-1500 g and 49.4% in children < 1000 g. Among children in special education, a similar birthweight gradient was found for maths achievement and hyperactivity, but not for reading achievement or IQ scores. Among children not in special education, only maths achievement showed such a decline with birthweight. A substantial proportion of low-birthweight children, including those of moderate low birthweight, receive special education services, although the need is greatest among those with the lowest birthweights. Maths achievement declined with birthweight regardless of educational placement. The medical and social risk factors that accompany low birthweight and may account for these findings, require further study.

Growth in Standardized Ability and Achievement Test Scores From 3rd to 10th Grade.

Growth in Test of Cognitive Skills (TCS) scores and Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) reading, math, and total achievement scores from 3rd to 10th grade was studied in 328 public school students in a middle-class suburban community. Surprisingly, groups differing in ability and achievement in 3rd grade made parallel progress over time, and some “fan-close” effects were found. With growth curve analysis of individual students using hierarchical linear models, initial status on cognitive ability predicted initial achievement scores but did not affect the rate of growth. Similarly, initial status in achievement predicted the intercept but not the slope in cognitive ability scores over time. Although replication is needed, this study illustrates how districts could use standardized test data to document growth of academic skills over time in high-, middle-, and low-achieving children; in racial or socioeconomic status subgroups; or in different classrooms, schools, or districts. On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which dictates that any state obtaining federal funds must show that it has adopted a program of high-quality, annual student assessments that can be used to determine the annual performance of every school and local educational agency (No Child Left Behind Act, 2002). Although the rhetoric surrounding passage of this bill suggested that regular standardized testing is a novel idea, in fact most school districts have well-established testing programs using both commercial tests and state-based assessments. Surprisingly, however, there is little research on such test data. In the present study, we analyzed standardized test data from one school district for three cohorts of children, each tested in 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 10th grades. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) were used to analyze performance over time as a function of initial status on ability and achievement measures. Particularly because the results of our study were surprising, replication in other school districts should be a high priority for future research.

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE ASSESSMENT AND DIAGNOSIS OF READING DISABILITY

Even though reading instruction had been historically the most important academic responsibility of schools, recently, it has drawn much greater attention because language processing has become the backbone of the unprecedented advancement in information technology. In light of this background, specific reading disability (RD, hereafter) has become the focus of intense research efforts. As the most commonly encountered variety of Learning Disability, RD is almost always identified on the basis of a discrepancy seen between the IQ score of the at-risk reader and his or her reading achievement score. In general, poor readers who have a “significant” discrepancy between IQ and achievement are classified as having learning disability (LD, hereafter); poor readers whose reading score and IQ are on par with each other are identified as not having a learning disability. This procedure, in essence, classifies children who experience difficulty in learning to read into two categories: poor readers with reading disability and poor readers without reading disability. This approach is based on the assumption that poor readers identified as having reading disability are qualitatively different from poor readers who are not so identified. This paper examines the validity of this form of classification and offers a new approach for dealing with children with reading problems. The proposed approach utilizes a method of diagnosis which is based on the Componential Model of reading which, instead of categorizing poor readers into the two categories, focuses on the cause of the reading difficulty and targets remedial instruction at the source of the reading problem.

Comments

Edward W. Hill: Thomas J. Kane, Douglas O. Staiger, and Gavin Samms make a contribution to our understanding of how Charlotte's housing market responds to new information about school quality. The results from their models indicate that long-term measures of school quality exert large positive effects on the value of housing after controlling for independent neighborhood effects. They find that annual fluctuations in school test performance do not affect housing values—the market treats them as noise. Surprisingly, the average educational attainment of an elementary school (as measured by the average reading and mathematics achievement scores of third and fifth graders) for whites influences house values while the scores of African American children do not. They also find that the presence of neighborhood schools increases the value of housing, especially for lower-income families.

The role of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity in the positive illusory bias.

The present study examined the relationships among gender, inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, depressive symptoms, and biases in perceptions of scholastic competence in children. Participants were 38 children with predominantly inattentive symptoms (IA), 59 children with predominantly hyperactive/impulsive symptoms or a combination of hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattention (HICB), and 83 control (CTL) children. HICB children overestimated their scholastic competence more than IA children when reading and math achievement scores were used as criteria and more than CTL children when math achievement and teacher perceptions of children's competence were used as criteria. IA children generally did not differ from CTL children with regard to estimations of competence. Regression analyses suggested that positive illusory self-perceptions are associated with more severe hyperactivity/impulsivity, but not more severe inattention.

An Experimental Analysis of Accommodation Decisions on Large-Scale Mathematics Tests

This article reports on an investigation of teachers and students within special education to determine the accuracy with which teachers recommend read-aloud accommodations for mathematics tests, and develop a profile of students who benefit from this type of accommodation. Students in both general (n = 973) and special education (n = 245) in elementary and middle schools from eight states were administered an accommodated and standard mathematics achievement test. Teachers were no more successful than chance at predicting which students would benefit from the accommodation. Supplementary analyses used pretest reading and mathematics achievement scores in an attempt to develop a profile of students who favored one or the other formats. The outcomes from accommodations did not necessarily match student profiles.

The Role of Environment in the Development of Reading Skills

The purpose of this study was to extend previous studies on the influence of environmental measures on intelligence scores by examining how proximal and distal measures of children's environments in the preschool period and in the primary-grade period are related to their performance on reading achievement tests. Reading performance was explored using two approaches. The first approach involved the identification of children within a longitudinal sample who had poor reading skills at 8 years of age. The second approach used the full range of reading scores to explore whether factors influencing poor reading were different from those influencing good reading. Participants were 113 children, including 35 children with poor reading skills, who were part of a longitudinal study of cognitive development. Socioeconomic status (SES), Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) scores at 3 and 10 years of age, and school-administered and individually administered reading achievement scores were obtained. Both SES and HOME scores were found to be related to reading abilities, but preschool environment measures were more strongly and consistently related to and predictive of reading scores. Differences in the patterns of correlations and the results of the predictive models were found between the full sample and the poor readers. Variables other than proximal and distal measures of the environment are involved in the development of reading skills.

At What Age Should Children Enter Kindergarten? A Question for Policy Makers and Parents

At What Age Should Children Enter Kindergarten? A Question for Policy Makers and Parents

Difference Scores in the Identification of Children with Learning Disabilities It's Time to Use a Different Method

In this article, we identify ten reasons why discrepancy scores (based on differences between IQ and reading achievement scores) provide an inadequate means for identifying children with reading disabilities. We recommend instead that children be identified simply on the basis of problems in reading skills, regardless of their IQs.

Defining the impact of hemophilia: the Academic Achievement in Children with Hemophilia Study.

Defining the impact of hemophilia: the Academic Achievement in Children with Hemophilia Study.

Editorial

Editorial Testing......3,2,1 Recently I read some material about the conflicting and confusing results of national and international testing efforts in general education. There seem to be two possible ways of interpreting the data: One, the United States is among world leaders in developing reading, math, and science skills in our school children; or Two, we are doing an abysmal job, and our children lack basic, reading, math, and science skills. Because of this, our children will be doomed to careers of weed pulling, broom pushing, and hamburger flipping, punctuated by unemployment and poverty. There is, of course, a third possibility: Perhaps all countries somehow are producing mindless troglodytes , unlike we highly educated and intelligent adults. I hope the (adult) readers of this editorial will not take the third possibility seriously, but I do want to address the first two issues and then try to relate them to testing of deaf children. The question of valid and reliable testing is assuming greater importance in the United States. At the time of preparation of this editorial, it appears that congress will mandate annual testing of children from grades three to eight, and possibly more. There will probably be compromises between state control of testing and federal requirements , so that there will continue to be some variation within a general trend toward uniformity in testing. From my limited observations, several states already have developed reliable and valid procedures, and several have not. I would expect this to continue, but with some overall improvement . At present there are literally thousands of tests being employed . The assumptions behind the tests and the goals vary, with a predictable variation in results. To a great extent, the results reported represent different orientations of norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests. For example, tests that compare children from different countries , states, cities or schools do not necessarily provide information about content or about excellence. It is within this context that so much confusion exists. The above-mentioned relatively high reading achievement scores for American children come from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. The math and science results come from the Third International Math and Science Study. The results, per se, tell us nothing about achievement. The poor results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which sets four levels in its testing for different grades: advanced, proficient, basic, and below basic. The tests are supervised by the congressionally appointed National Assessment Governing Board. For one year, almost 40% of American fourth graders were rated below basic level in reading, 36% in math, and 33% in science. The results appear grim. Which sets of tests are more valid? It is difficult to say. Certainly they are different. The international math, science , and reading fourth grade tests ask children to perform basic tasks, for example addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in math. The NAEP adds word problems. On the surface, it might appear that the competency -based NAEP tests are preferable. However, there is no consensus on this. Some critics argue that the NAEP grading scale is unrealistically strict and underestimates achievement. Supporters of the NAEP tests say these are hard and stiffly graded, but that this is positive because the high standards will help schools improve. Volume 146, No. 3, 2001 American Annals of the Deaf Editorial The arguments for different approaches to testing are complex and will not be resolved in the near future. Our immediate concern is that deaf children will participate in the various testing programs, and we have little or no understanding of the implications of this testing. If there continues to be variation across states, the possibility exists that deaf children will "fall between the cracks." Many may be denied promotion or graduation because of inappropriate testing. We have had no nationwide achievement data on deaf school-age children for five years now, and prospects for the future are uncertain. Improved testing could provide an opportunity to develop approaches to benefit deaf children that could be incorporated into individual academic education plans, but this will happen only with a major national effort that transcends states boundaries. It would seem that this would be a logical area...