We are pleased to contribute to this inaugural issue of The Reading League Journal. The journal's goal is to share information about linking reading science to educational practice. The need is great: literacy levels in the US are shockingly low; a very large percentage of children and adults have only basic reading skills, as indicated by every…

Up until 2020, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scores had increased only slightly since the early 1990s with large achievement gaps for students of color and students living in poverty. Modest gains in fourth grade reading proficiency since 1992 were erased during the pandemic. The insufficient progress in reading even…

As researchers at a testing organization concerned with the appropriate uses and validity evidence for our assessments, we provide an applied perspective related to the issues raised in the focus article. Newton's proposal for elaborating the consensus definition of validity is offered with the intention to reduce the risks of inadequate…

In all the acrimonious discussion surrounding No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), surprisingly little attention has been given to the actual impact of that legislation and other accountability systems on student performance. Now a reputable body, a committee set up by the National Research Council (NRC), the research arm of the National…

Comments on the original article, "Intelligence: New findings and theoretical developments," by R. E. Nisbett, J. Aronson, C. Blair, W. Dickens, J. Flynn, D. F. Halpern, and E. Turkheimer (see record 2011-30298-001). The present authors assert Nisbett et al were incorrect when they claimed that between 1972 and 2002 there was a 5.5-point…

Stereotype threat is frequently purported to be an important determinant of gender gaps in math. Unlike prior studies, which mostly occur in lab settings, I use data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)--a large, representative assessment of U.S. children--where through a design quirk, students are randomly assigned test…

The 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) U.S. history assessment measures how well fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders are learning American history, and whether they can evaluate historical evidence and understand change and continuity over time. Comparing the results from the 2010 assessment to results from previous years…

To complement the information gathered on middle school and high school literacy initiatives as reported in "Middle and High School Literacy across the Curriculum" (Task 1.2 Fast Response Project), the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast (REL-SE) staff conducted a scan of the six southeast states to gather the following information…

States are the primary policymakers in several important areas of K-12 education. Given their dominant role in educational funding and regulation, states not surprisingly have been the primary initiators of the latest wave of educational reform starting in the mid-1980s. In this paper, the authors sought to test indirectly for the effects of…