The gaps in achievement and attainment between races have remained stable in recent decades while the gaps between classes have grown. Researchers consistently conclude that these gaps form mostly before school and during the summer as the result of a vast array of out-of-school influences, but policy has primarily aimed to change what happens…

This paper examines evidence from a performance-pay program implemented in five Little Rock, Arkansas elementary schools between 2004 and 2007. Using a differences-in-differences approach, the evidence shows that students whose teachers were eligible for performance pay made substantially larger test score gains in math, reading, and language than…

A standards-based exit policy was implemented in an urban district in the northwestern United States. This paper considers the second year of implementation with a group of 2,581 students in the fifth grade. Of these, 104 were identified as not having the skills to exit fifth grade. Reading achievement as measured by two tests, the Iowa Tests of…

Prior research has shown that test takers use a variety of strategies when taking passage-based reading comprehension tests. The specific effects that these alternative strategies have on actual examinee test performance are largely unknown. Evidence suggesting that performance differences exist across testing conditions would imply that the…

A study examined the effects of prediction training on the reading comprehension and written composition performance of fourth-grade students on the following reading and writing tasks: story recall, story generation, and number of relevant predictions. Subjects, 40 students attending two private urban elementary schools, were assigned to one of…

A study involving 14 regular classroom student science teachers assigned to Grades 3, 4, and 5 and the public school students in each of the classes was undertaken to assess the relationship between student achievement and teacher performance ratings. The student teachers were all female and were seniors in a four-year undergraduate teacher…

The literature on measurement reliability shows the consensus that group heterogeneity with regard to the trait being measured is a factor that affects the sample measurement reliability, but the degree of such effect is not entirely clear. Sample performance also has the potential to affect measurement reliability because of its effect on the…

This paper analyzes data from three administrations (spring and fall 1977 and spring 1978) of reading and mathematics achievement tests across grades three through eight. The study asks two major questions: (1) how accurately are students identified for Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I services based upon the first test administration?;…

Validity and reliability issues in standardized testing of students of limited English proficiency (LEP) were studied. Existing data from four different school sites were obtained for LEP and non-LEP students for three different standardized tests, the Stanford Achievement Tests (Ninth edition), the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and the Language…

Research on an interpretation technique (IT) for using the Pupil Item Response Record (PIRR) of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) to actively involve students in their test interpretation was presented. The major concern of the study was to determine whether the IT had any impact on attitudes toward or knowledge about the ITBS. Students in…

Teachers from the Austin Independent School District were identified as providing exemplary instruction to elementary Hispanic limited English proficient (LEP) students based on a comparison of predicted versus actual achievement scores in reading, language, and math. Predicted performance was based on equations generated by stepwise linear…

The effectiveness of the Reading Recovery Program, a literacy intervention for at-risk first-grade students, as it was implemented in 1995-96 in a small rural school district in Texas was studied. Reading Recovery consists of daily individual literacy tutoring sessions taught by a specially trained teacher, and emphasizes active engagement of the…

A set of 10 attitudinal items from the 1985 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was administered to 131 fifth graders who had taken the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to determine the relationship between reading achievement and attitudes. Complete, appropriate data were available for 114 students. Teachers' responses to selected NAEP…

This paper isolates and examines separately three distinct sources of error in essay scores: lack of agreement between raters; inconsistencies in performance within mode of discourse, and inconsistencies in performance between modes of discourse. Essay prompts in the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) Writing Supplement were designed to assess…

The relationship was investigated between test scores obtained from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) and the Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED), and the grade point average (GPA) at the high school and college level. The data used were unique in providing a longitudinal comparison of college students' performance with the results of…