Project Activities
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Product: The project team will develop the Platform for Actionable Reading Assessment (PARA), a comprehensive oral literacy assessment to efficiently and accurately measure the components of reading, including rapid naming, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and spelling. For oral tasks, PARA will prompt the student to complete the task aloud and will record their responses. A mixture of human transcription and automatic speech recognition will score the responses and, within 24 hours, post the scores to a teacher dashboard to inform instruction. The assessment will replace one or more existing assessments of oral reading fluency, and results will be shared with teachers so that they can integrate the assessment findings into formal in-class learning. Training resources will support teachers with implementation, including videos, slide decks, and help articles.
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Company Website: www.literably.com
Video Demonstration of the Phase I Prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOIWlPTFbNs
Project website:
Supplemental information
During Phase II development, the team will focus on optimizing the back-end data infrastructure, expanding the assessment tasks, and finalizing the user interfaces for students and educators. After development is complete, researchers will conduct a pilot study with 48 Kindergarten to Grade 5 classrooms (eight per grade). Half of the classrooms will be assigned to use the treatment and half will follow the business-as-usual assessment of oral reading fluency. The study will examine the feasibility, usability, fidelity of implementation, and validity of the assessment, and its promise for improving oral reading outcomes from pre-test to post-test. To measure the validity of the assessment, researchers will compare scores with validated measures of oral reading, such as the STAR Early Literacy, STAR Reading, and the mCLASS. Researchers will gather cost information using the "ingredients method" and will include all expenditures on items such as personnel, facilities, equipment, materials, and training.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
