For students who show inadequate response to research-based intervention, intensification of intervention using data-based decision making (DBDM) is recommended. There is a paucity of research on upper elementary students related to the efficacy of (a) word reading interventions and (b) DBDM procedures. This randomized controlled trial examined…

TIMSS and PIRLS assess representative samples of students at regular intervals, measuring trends in student achievement and student contexts for learning. Because individual students are not tracked over time, analysis of international large-scale assessment data is usually conducted cross-sectionally. Gustafsson (2007) proposed examining the data…

This manual provides guidance and documentation for users of the kindergarten (or base year) data of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011). It begins with an overview of the ECLS-K:2011. Subsequent chapters provide details on the study data collection instruments and methods; the direct and indirect…

This paper uses recent evidence from international early grade reading programs to provide guidance about how best to create appropriate targets and more effectively identify improved program outcomes. Recent results show that World Bank and US Agency for International Development-funded large-scale international education interventions in low-…

Purpose: This paper argues that in a well-organised school with strong leadership and vision coupled with a concerted effort to improve the teaching performance of each teacher, student achievement can be enhanced. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that while macro-effect sizes such as "whole of school" metrics are useful for…

This manual provides guidance and documentation for users of the longitudinal kindergarten-first grade (K-1) data file of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011). It mainly provides information specific to the first-grade rounds of data collection. Data for the ECLS-K:2011 are released in both a…

This paper reports provisional Australian comparison data and scoring instructions for the "Test of Word Reading Efficiency" (TOWRE). The TOWRE is a popular reading fluency test used in reading research, classroom assessment and clinical practice. Approximate "norms" were obtained from children attending four primary schools in…

This dissertation is developed around two studies created with the goal of describing and quantifying current educators' knowledge and perceptions of reading assessment and subsequent data-based instructional decision making. Unique to the field, a critical component of this study is an emphasis on educators' development of "data…

When students do not score well on standardized tests, their school can suffer. In an attempt to improve standardized test scores, a district placed students into a program called Seminar to help them work on weak areas of content through personalized instruction. The purpose of this project study was to assess if the Seminar program had a…

The purpose of this study is to understand how teachers make sense of data from a complex set of reading assessments and how inferences they derive from the data affect decisions about instruction. There are two key research questions--1) How does a teacher's developing expertise with a complex set of assessments (assessment literacy) affect the…

The demands and expectations placed on all schools in the United States to meet the needs of a growing and diverse population continue to raise the questions, what needs to be done in order for all students to achieve success, and how can this success be measured? This study, researched and reported in the form of a dissertation, was performed on…

This research is motivated by an analysis of reading research data. We are interested in modeling the test outcome of ability to fluently recode letters into sounds of kindergarten children aged between 5 and 7. The data showed excessive zero scores (more than 30% of children) on the test. In this dissertation, we carefully examine the models…

The primary aim of the Middle School Intervention Project (MSIP) is to evaluate the impact of a multi-component intervention for struggling adolescent readers on reading outcomes. The intervention consists of: (1) targeted, Tier 2 reading and (2) school engagement interventions, and (3) data-based-decision-making (DBDM) teams to review and act on…

Test administrators often face the challenge of detecting differential item functioning (DIF) with samples of size smaller than that recommended by experts. A Bayesian approach can incorporate, in the form of a prior distribution, existing information on the inference problem at hand, which yields more stable estimation, especially for small…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of Pennsylvania school library programs on student learning--specifically, the infrastructure (staffing, budgets, collections, technology, and access hours) that contributes most to student achievement, the costs and benefits associated with them, and the gap between current Pennsylvania school…