The development of progress monitoring test of reading comprehension

The purpose of this study was to develop a set of equivalent tests for reading comprehension progress monitoring for grades four to six. The reading comprehension equivalent tests can also be used as tools for evaluating instructional effects of remedial intervention. In this test, there were six alternate-forms for each grade. Four testlets were included in each alternate-form. Each testlet had one passage and ten test items. The four passages in one alternate-form included one short narrative, one short expository, one long narrative, and one long expository texts. There were 200-300 characters in short passages, and 400-500 characters in long passages. The test items were designed to measure lexical access, literal comprehension, summarization, and inferential comprehension. There were forty items in total in one alternate-form. Regarding reliability, the Cronbach’s α coefficients and split-half coefficients of all alternate-forms were mostly above.80. Using “Reading Comprehension Screening Test for Elementary School Students-Version A” as criterion, the criterion validity coefficient were.67 (p <.001),.59 (p <.001),.75 (p <.001) for grades 4, 5, and 6 respectively. In addition, based on the data collected from six time-points in 2011 school year, the growth model analysis revealed that the reading comprehension abilities of the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders increased from the beginning to the end in one school year. In order for teachers to monitor students’ progress, this test provided not only the norm of percentile rank, but also the norm of ability value (theta score). Using the ability values between two time-points, a growth coefficient could be calculated. Several suggestions and one limitation for educational application were provided.