Learning Disabled Students' Spontaneous Use of Test-Taking Skills on Reading Achievement Tests

1985 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Scruggs ◽  
Karla Bennion ◽  
Steven Lifson
Keyword(s):  
Reading Achievement ◽  
Achievement Tests ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Achievement Test ◽  
Strategy Use ◽  
Disabled Students ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Test Taking ◽  
Level Of Confidence ◽  
Resource Rooms

The present investigation was undertaken to identify the type of strategies learning disabled (LD) students employ on standardized, group-administered achievement test items. Of particular interest was level of strategy effectiveness and possible differences in strategy use between LD and nondisabled students. Students attending resource rooms and regular third-grade classes were administered items from reading achievement tests and interviewed concerning the strategies they had employed in answering the questions and their level of confidence in each answer. Results indicated that (a) LD students were less likely to report use of appropriate strategies on inferential questions, (b) LD students were less likely to attend carefully to specific format demands, and (c) LD students reported inappropriately high levels of confidence.

scholarly journals Curriculum Biases in Reading Achievement Tests

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Jenkins ◽  
Darlene Pany
Keyword(s):  
Reading Achievement ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Curriculum Evaluation ◽  
Achievement Tests ◽  
Achievement Test ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Single Test ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
Reading Curricula

The extent and direction of curriculum bias in standardized reading achievement tests are examined. Bias is estimated by comparing the relative overlap in the contents of five separate reading achievement tests with the content of seven commercial reading series at first and second grade levels. Overlap between each achievement test and each reading series is reported in terms of achievement test grade equivalent scores that would be expected given mastery of the words which appear both as content in a reading series and as achievement test items. Results indicate clear discrepancies between the grade equivalent scores obtained both between tests for a single curriculum and on a single test for different reading curricula. The implications of the apparent curriculum bias of achievement tests are discussed as they relate to teacher, child, and curriculum evaluation, to reading replacement, and to applied educational research.

Improving the Test-Taking Skills of Learning-Disabled Students

1985 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 847-850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Scruggs ◽  
Debra Tolfa
Keyword(s):  
Test Scores ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Achievement Test ◽  
Achievement Scores ◽  
Test Analysis ◽  
Disabled Students ◽  
Stanford Achievement Test ◽  
Test Taking ◽  
Third Grade Students ◽  
And Control

16 learning-disabled second- and third-grade students were matched on previous years' achievement scores and grade and assigned at random to experimental and control conditions. Students in the experimental condition were given 8 20-min. sessions of training in test-taking skills particular to the Stanford Achievement Test. Analysis of test scores indicated trained students scored significantly higher on one subtest of a shortened version of the test than students who had not been trained.

Standardized Achievement Tests: How Useful for Special Education?

1978 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 448-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Jenkins ◽  
Darlene Pany
Keyword(s):  
Reading Achievement ◽  
Achievement Tests ◽  
Achievement Test ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Single Test ◽  
Exceptional Children ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
Standardized Achievement Tests

The extent and direction of curriculum bias in standardized reading achievement tests are examined. Bias was estimated by comparing the relative overlap in the contents of four separate reading achievement tests with the contents of five commercial reading series at first and second grade levels. Overlap between each achievement test and each reading series is reported in terms of achievement test grade equivalent scores that would be expected given mastery of the words that appear both as content in a reading series and as achievement test items. Results indicate clear discrepancies between the grade equivalent scores obtained, both between tests for a single curriculum and on a single test for different reading curricula. The implications of the apparent curriculum bias of achievement tests are discussed as they relate to evaluation of teachers, children, and curricula; to reading placement; and to the identification and classification of exceptional children.

Characteristics of Teacher-Student Discourse in Computer-Based Dialogue Journals: A Descriptive Study

1992 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Rueda
Keyword(s):  
Journal Writing ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Disabled Students ◽  
Teacher Input ◽  
Teacher Student ◽  
Pull Out ◽  
Conversational Style ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Resource Rooms ◽  
Pull Out Programs

Twenty-seven learning disabled students in grades four through six engaged in interactive journal writing with their teachers in seven resource rooms (special education pull-out programs). Dialogue journal writing took place by means of a microcomputer program, and was carried out over a two- to three-month period. Although journal writing requires a conversational style, the literature suggests this might be affected both by learning disabled students' social and communicative abilities and by teachers' predisposition to engage in evaluative, “recitation”-style interactions in the classroom. A variety of discourse features of the journals were analyzed. In general, students engaged appropriately in written interaction with their teachers, but the journals tended to be dominated by teachers. For example, teachers wrote more, asked more questions, and introduced more new topics, including more topics that led to extended sequences or topic chains. Analysis of teacher input suggested that teachers used more complex than simple questions, and both students and teachers responded to a relatively high proportion of each others' initiations. In addition, various examples showed that teachers were able to be more conversational and less “teacher-like” in their discourse: that is, they were able to use a more personal style than otherwise common in the classroom. Analysis of the journals suggested that when such conversational style occurred, the topics were maintained to a greater extent than when the discourse was of a more traditional nature.

Three-Year Analysis of Characteristics of Learning Disabled Students in Self-Contained Classrooms and Resource Rooms

1989 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 635-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley E. Wigle ◽  
Warren J. White
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Achievement Scores ◽  
Disabled Students ◽  
Resource Room ◽  
Resource Rooms ◽  
Over Time

The present investigation examined the characteristics of school-identified learning disabled students from a large metropolitan school district in Tennessee. While it corroborated several findings of previous surveys of such students, this report also supplemented the literature by comparing the differences within a three-year span of time between school-identified learning disabled students who were assigned to self-contained classrooms and those who were assigned to resource rooms. Among the major findings were the presence of initial differences in IQ between self-contained and resource room students, the absence of differences in initial achievement scores between these two groups, and a decline over time in IQ, arithmetic, and spelling scores for both groups.

K-Tea Mathematics Scores of Learning Disabled Students in Resource and Inclusive Settings

1997 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 773-774
Author(s):  
Gail Brasher ◽  
Renitta Goldman ◽  
Gary L. Sapp
Keyword(s):  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Mathematics Instruction ◽  
Relative Effectiveness ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Significant Gain ◽  
Disabled Students ◽  
Mathematics Scores ◽  
School Year ◽  
Inclusive Settings ◽  
Resource Rooms

The relative effectiveness of mathematics instruction in resource rooms versus inclusive settings was examined with 30 boys in Grades 5 and 6 identified as learning disabled in mathematics. The boys were pretested at the beginning of the school year and posttested at the end. Treatment was 45 min. of daily instruction in mathematics provided by six teachers for one school year. K-TEA Mathematics Computation and Application scores, separately compared in 2 × 2 repeated measures analyses of variance, were not significantly different; however, a significant gain was noted across settings for K-TEA Mathematics Application scores.

scholarly journals Should Achievement Tests be Used to Judge School Quality?

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott C. Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Instructional Quality ◽  
Achievement Tests ◽  
Achievement Test ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Local Study ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Standardized Achievement Tests

This study provides empirical evidence to answer the question whether student scores on standardized achievement tests represent reasonable measures of instructional quality. Using a research protocol designed by Popham and the local study directors, individual test items from a nationally-marketed standardized achievement test were rated by educators and parents to determine the degree to which raters felt that the items reflect important content that is actually taught in schools, and the degree to which raters felt that students' answers to the questions would be likely to be unduly influenced by confounded causality. Three research questions are addressed: What percentage of test items are considered suspect by raters as indicators of school instructional quality? Do educators and parents of school-age children differ in their ratings of the appropriateness of test items? Do educators and parents feel that standardized achievement test scores should be used as an indicator of school instructional quality? Descriptive statistics show that on average, raters felt that the content reflected in test questions measured material that is important for students to know. However, for reading and language arts questions, between about 20% to 40% of the items were viewed as suspect in terms of the other criteria.

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