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This report provides a comparison of the difficulty level of the reading selections used in the Texas assessments of reading for grades 4, 8, and 10 from 1995 to 1998. The purpose for the analysis was to determine whether the tests at each grade level were comparable in difficulty from year to year and, if not, how they changed in difficulty. The questions are important. In order for policy makers and other citizens to determine whether there is genuine improvement in students’ reading skills from year to year, the tests that are used need to be comparable in difficulty from year to year. A test that is harder than the previous year’s test will mask improvement. Similarly, a test that is easier than the previous year’s test will mask lack of improvement or decline.

Sandra Stotsky, Ed.D.
Harvard Graduate School of Education
This report provides a comparison of the difficulty level of the reading selections used in the Texas assessments of reading for grades 4, 8, and 10 from 1995 to 1998.

The study reported in this volume was undertaken with the assumption that empirical work in the field of reading had advanced sufficiently to allow substantial agreed-upon results and conclusions that could form a basis for breaching the differences among the warring parties.

by Dr Kerry Hempenstall  - Over the past two decades, but particularly in the last 10 years, there has been a burgeoning consensus about the critical importance of phonemic awareness to beginning reading success, and about its role in specific reading disability or dyslexia (Hatcher et al., 1994; Share, 1995; Stanovich, 1986).

St. Tammany Parish Council