Measures of Reading Ability
Seven measures of reading skill were administered several times for the evaluation to assess student progress in learning to read. These measures assessed phonemic decoding, word reading accuracy, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension.
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Phonemic Decoding
- Word Attack (WA) subtest from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised (WRMT-R)
- Phonemic Decoding Efficiency (PDE) subtest from the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE)
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Word Reading Accuracy and Fluency
- Word Identification (WI) subtest from the WRMT-R
- Sight Word Efficiency (SWE) subtest from the TOWRE
- Oral Reading Fluency subtest from Edformation, Inc. This report refers to the reading passages as "AIMSweb" passages, which is the term used broadly in the reading practice community.
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Reading Comprehension
- Passage Comprehension (PC) subtest from the WRMT-R
- Passage Comprehension from the Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE)
The scores analyzed in this report are from the tests near the end of the 2004-2005 school year, one year after the interventions ended. Results from analyzing the scores on these tests from one year earlier—the end of the intervention year are presented in the National Assessment of Title I Interim Report.5 In addition to analyzing data from seven reading tests administered by the study, Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA)reading and mathematics scores for each student were analyzed and included in the results. Students in the evaluation sample took these standards-based PSSA tests from late March to early April of the 2003-2004 school year, the year during which the interventions took place.
5 Torgesen, Joseph, David Myers, Allen Schirm, Elizabeth Stuart, Sonya Vartivarian, Wendy Mansfield, Fran Stancavage, Donna Durno, Roseanne Javorsky, andCinthis Haan. National Assessment of Title I Interim Report to Congress: Volume II: Closing the Reading Gap, First Year Findings from a Randomized Trial of Four Reading Interventions for Striving Readers, 2006.