District Assessments
The major comparisons used for this study were based on scores from District-wide assessments. Table 1 describes the four assessments.
Please Insert Table 1
Adaptive Reading and Curriculum-Based Measurement for Reading are both part of the Formative Assessment for Teachers (FAST), developed primarily at the University of Minnesota. These assessments have several purposes, including screening, progress monitoring, and to aid in the analysis of students’ reading skills. There are several studies supporting the theoretical underpinnings of these assessments Ardoin, et. al, (2013), for example. Explanatory Performance Assessments were developed by Columbia University to coincide with the goals of Common Core. The District Unit Writing Assessments provide data on two important State Core writing goals, narrative and opinion.
The assessments were administered during the school year. The District Unit Writing Assessments were only administered once, in the Spring. The other three assessments were administered three times: Fall, Winter, and Spring. Assessment results for all fifty students were secured through the help of the assigned Instructional Strategist. She was extremely helpful in securing the scores, and printing reports based on those scores for the second-grade classes. All fifty children had responded to three of these assessment protocols during their kindergarten and first grade years. The District Writing assessment was new in second grade. This would indicate that responses on the assessments were a reliable estimation of certain literacy skills.
Results from the assessment protocols were transmitted in the form of reports, which documented assessment results for all second-grade students. The data from children with signed assent forms were used in the data analysis. The identification numbers of those children were used to differentiate the experimental from the control group.
In order to begin to test our hypotheses, the data were then compiled according to the assessment protocol. The data were then further compiled according to group, experimental and control.
Two types of descriptive analysis were performed. First, mean and standard deviation values were calculated for all children in each group, according to all four assessment protocols. These data were further analyzed in terms of assessment periods, fall, winter, and spring.
The second type of analysis compared the average change in assessment protocol for each group over the three assessment periods. Three of the four assessment protocols were administered multiple times during the school year. Comparison of the change data were then compiled comparing the assessment periods: Fall-Winter, Winter-Spring, and Fall-Spring.
Finally, two types of inferential statistical analyses were performed. A one-tailed ANOVA was calculated. Since this was viewed as a preliminary study, an alpha level of .10 was used in the calculations. These results will be reported for the three assessments (Adaptive Reading, Curriculum-based measure of Reading, and Explanatory Performance Assessment) which were administered to each student three times during the school year. District-wide Writing Assessment was only administered once, in the Spring. Comparison change data were also subjected to ANOVA analysis for the above three assessments.
Effect size, reported as Cohen’s d, was calculated for the three assessments, during the Fall, Winter, and Spring assessment periods. Since there was a difference in the number of subjects in the experimental as compared to the control group, it was decided operationally to use the pooled standard deviation measure in the effect size calculation. Interpretation of effect size data were based on suggestions by Cohen (1988)