This study examined the new self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ-S), SDQ-Kids, in primary school children regarding internal consistency, teacher-child agreement, and validity. Data from 2,655 children in Grades 1 to 3 and their teachers were analyzed. Children completed SDQ-Kids, previously piloted (n = 896),…

Running Records provide a standardized method for recording and assessing students' oral reading behaviors and are excellent formative assessment tools to guide instructional decision-making. This study expands on prior Running Record reliability work by evaluating the extent to which external raters and teachers consistently assessed students'…

This study details the construction of parameters for generating subskill mastery math measures to be used for screening, intervention planning, progress monitoring, and proximal program evaluation. Parameters for generating assessment measures were built and tested to verify initial equivalence of generated measures using potential digits correct…

This article describes the development of the Early Elementary Writing Rubric (EEWR), an analytic assessment designed to measure kindergarten and first-grade writing and inform educators' instruction. Crocker and Algina's (1986) approach to instrument development and validation was used as a guide to create and refine the writing measure. Study 1…

Several school districts in Georgia use two teacher-administered diagnostic assessments of student knowledge of mathematics as part of their multi-tiered system of support in grades K-8: the Global Strategy Stage (GloSS; New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2012) and the Individual Knowledge Assessment of Number (IKAN; New Zealand Ministry of…

This document are the appendixes for the report, "The Reliability and Consequential Validity of Two Teacher-Administered Student Mathematics Diagnostic Assessments." Rather than relying on occasional testimonials from the field, decisions about using diagnostic assessments across the state should be based on psychometric data from an…

Teachers need to assess their students' current level of mathematical understanding to provide appropriate interventions for students who are struggling. Several school districts in Georgia currently use two assessments for this purpose--the Global Strategy Stage (GloSS) and the Individual Knowledge Assessment of Number (IKAN). The IKAN is…

Vocabulary skills are important for overall reading competence, but vocabulary assessment approaches that inform instructional decision-making and are sensitive to improvement are limited. This article describes a process for developing vocabulary measures designed to facilitate data-driven decision-making for kindergarten and first-grade students…

Becoming a fluent reader has been established as important to reading comprehension. Prosody (expression) is an indicator of fluent reading that is linked to improved comprehension in students across elementary, middle, and secondary grades. Fluent reading is most often evaluated by classroom teachers through the use of a rubric, with the most…

There is some evidence that reading and spelling are complementary processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which contextualized spelling (i.e., spelling activities within the context of reading instruction) is used to support reading in first-grade core reading programs. Analysis of 75 lessons across five programs…

This study compared reading rate to reading fluency (as measured by a rating scale). After listening to first graders read short passages, we assigned an overall fluency rating (low, average, or high) to each reading. We then used predictive discriminant analyses to determine which of five measures--accuracy, rate (objective); accuracy, phrasing,…

This study examined the effects of incremental rehearsal (IR) on letter sound expression for one kindergarten and one first grade English learner who were below district benchmark for letter sound fluency. A single-subject multiple-baseline design across sets of unknown letter sounds was used to evaluate the effect of IR on letter-sound expression…

In this brief article, the reliability of scores for the Draw-A-Person Intellectual Ability Test for Children, Adolescents, and Adults (DAP: IQ; Reynolds & Hickman, 2004) was examined through several analyses with a sample of 147 children from rural Malawi, Africa using a Chichewa translation of instructions. Cronbach alpha coefficients for…

Children who have difficulty learning to read are at increased risk for academic failure, poor self-esteem, anxiety and depression, and unemployment. To help reduce these risks, it is important to identify and treat weaknesses in a child's reading as early as possible. The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable comprehensive…

Many students who struggle to obtain the alphabetic principle are at risk for being identified as having a reading disability and would benefit from additional explicit phonics instruction as a remedial measure. In this action research case study, the research team conducted two experiments to investigate the effects of a color-coded, onset-rime,…