These are the appendices for the report "The Effects of an Academic Language Program on Student Reading Outcomes." This study investigated WordGen Elementary, a program designed to improve fourth- and fifth-grade students' ability to understand and communicate academic language and their general reading skill. The program provider…

Valid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of fourth- and fifth-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel text-as-data methods to develop automated measures of teaching to complement classroom observations…

Valid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers, but conventional classroom observations are costly, prone to rater bias, and hard to implement at scale. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of 4th- and 5th-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel…

Stealth assessment has been successfully embedded in educational games to measure students' learning in an unobtrusive and supportive way. This study explored the possibility of applying stealth assessment in a digital reading platform and sought to identify potential in-system indicators of students' digital learning outcomes. Utilizing the user…

Within multitiered systems of support, assessment practices that limit the amount of time students miss instruction should be prioritized. At the same time, decisions about student response to intervention need to be based upon technically adequate data. We evaluated the impact of data collection frequency and trend estimation method on the…

Teacher practices created experiences for students to guide their inquiry by creating opportunities to gather data through field notes. Students examined their county and gathered data from the field on a daylong investigation of their county. Students generated questions and considered their observations at multiple stops. Students learned to…

Although extensive research exists on the use of curriculum-based measures for progress monitoring, little is known about using computer adaptive tests (CATs) for progress-monitoring purposes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the frequency of data collection on individual and group growth estimates using a CAT. Data were…

In 2012, New York education officials and the state's teachers union announced one of the nation's most aggressive programs for teacher and principal evaluation--the Annual Professional Performance Review system (APPR)--which required that 40% of an educator's evaluation be based on student growth, using a combination of the state assessment and…

This three-year research study examined the influence of interactive technologies on the math achievement of Indigenous students in Years 4, 5, 6 and 7 technology-equipped classrooms in a rural elementary school in British Columbia, Canada. Using a mixed-methods approach, the researcher conducted semistructured interviews and collected math…

This technical report provides detailed information regarding the technical, statistical, and measurement attributes of the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP) for the Grades 3-8 English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics 2018 Operational Tests. This report includes information about test content and test development, item (i.e., individual…

Purpose: In an era of unprecedented student measurement and emphasis on data-driven educational decision making, the full potential for using data to target resources to students has yet to be realized. This study explores the utility of machine-learning techniques with large-scale administrative data to identify student dropout risk. Research…

This study reports on the statistical content of five U.S. textbook series written for elementary students in grades 1-5. The researchers examined 17,688 pages and coded 7445 statistical tasks to determine (1) the distribution of statistical topics within textbooks, and (2) the relative emphasis on the phases of the statistical problem solving…

This technical report provides detailed information regarding the technical, statistical, and measurement attributes of the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP) for the Grades 3-8 English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics 2017 Operational Tests. This report includes information about test content and test development, item (i.e., individual…

The authors open this article with a description of an incident that happened in 1992, when 28,800 rubber bath toys (i.e., ducks, frogs, turtles, and beavers) fell off a cargo ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In 2009, these rubber bath toys were still washing ashore on beaches all around the world. This science instruction can be used with…

Many schools identified by states as needing improvement through their Elementary and Secondary Education Act waivers have selected Response to Intervention (RTI), a three-tiered instruction program sometimes referred to as tiered levels of instruction, as one of their main strategies for improving school performance and closing achievement gaps.…