From the abstract: "Ongoing expansion of early education services in the United States is often rooted in these programs' contribution to development that promotes later academic and behavioral competence. Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS, sometimes referred to as Response to Intervention), represent one increasingly common resource to promote desired outcomes for all children. MTSS requires seasonal screening of all students and progress monitoring of those selected for more intensive intervention. This study explores development and evaluation of measures for these uses, designed specifically to assess the language and early literacy development of 3-year-old children. Results from assessment of 449 children describe measure reliability, growth across three seasonal screenings, development of criterion-referenced benchmarks, and variations in growth for children at different levels of initial performance. Results are discussed in terms of normative versus criterion-referenced standards for building MTSS assessment systems as well as future directions for research, policy, and practice."Citation: McConnell, S. R., Wackerle-Hollman, A. K., Albano, A. D., Lease, E. M., Elmquist, M., & Will, K. K. (2024). Growth and utility of language and early literacy measures for young children. Journal of Early Intervention, 46(4), 526–543.

From the Introduction: "To provide optimal power and usefulness within our Star Assessments and many of our practice products, Renaissance takes a unique approach to content creation through the development of custom learning progressions. In general, learning progressions are descriptions of successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about key disciplinary concepts and practices across multiple grades, which outline intermediate steps toward expertise (Pellegrino, 2011). Learning progressions lay out in words and examples what it means to move toward more expert understanding (Wilson & Bertenthal 2005) in a subject area. While not unlike a traditional scope and sequence, learning progressions are far more thoughtfully developed and emphasize a holistic, cross-grades focus."The Full Report is available online: <https://renaissance.widen.net/s/jdm9kgx5cw/780549-lpfocusskills-whitepaper>.

FastBridge is committed to providing psychometrically sound assessments that provide valid and fair results for all students. This manual contains the psychometric evidence of the FastBridge Assessments. The full report is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R64614>.

This manual describes the design and application of each FastBridge assessment. Each section begins with an overview of the test's purpose and use, followed by a detailed description of the content and design of the assessment and concludes with an overview of the administration and scoring procedures.The full report is available online: <https://docs.renaissance.com/R64613>.

About the review: "The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) has contracted with WestEd (www.WestEd.org), a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan research and development organization, to conduct the legislatively mandated READ ACT Evaluation. CDE selected the WestEd-led partnership, including Augenblick, Palaich and Associates (www.apa-consulting.net) and RTI International (www.rti.org), through a competitive bidding process conducted between October and December 2019. The purpose of this component of the evaluation is to assess whether CDE-approved assessments meet the requirements of SB 19-199 and widely accepted professional technical and quality criteria. This report begins with ratings regarding the extent to which the vendor-provided assessment evidence addresses the SB 19-199 requirements and the additional technical and quality criteria. It then details how we made our summary ratings, first across the legislative requirements and then across the additional criteria, including a selection of descriptive notes on the findings. The final page includes a summary rating for both the SB 19-199 requirements and the additional technical and quality criteria and, if relevant, a rationale for removal from the advisory list."The review is available online: <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cFnDuD6qeJZlOLWvdvl_ENWmxTMhVK7r/view>.

From the abstract: "For young Spanish-English dual language learners (SE-DLLs), early literacy skills, including phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge in Spanish as well as English, are crucial to their reading success. However, there is a lack of research about how SE-DLLs develop early literacy skills, and how their rates of performance can inform evidence-based intervention. This article examined to what degree SE-DLLs with disabilities or at risk for later reading difficulties on early literacy skills demonstrated growth on English and Spanish measures of early literacy when compared with their typically developing peers. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze growth for 325 SE-DLLs on four Individual Growth and Development Indicators that assessed phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge in English and Spanish. Results indicated that at-risk and typically developing children showed significant slopes for all measures and that at-risk children grew faster than typically developing children on Spanish alphabet knowledge measures." Citation: Wackerle-Hollman, A. K., Duran, L. K., & Miranda, A. (2020). Early literacy skill growth in Spanish-speaking children with and at risk for disabilities in early childhood. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 40(1), 24-38.The Full Report is available online: <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1257815.pdf>.

This technical manual is a compendium of all relevant information about content and item development, reliability and validity, norming, and score definitions for myIGDIs Early Literacy by Renaissance.Email research@renaissance.com to request a copy of the technical manual from the Renaissance Research Department.

From the abstract: "Evidence of longitudinal relations between language and early literacy skills in early childhood and later reading (and other) achievement is growing, along with an expanding array of early education programs designed to improve later academic outcomes and prevent, reduce, or close later academic achievement gaps across groups. Assessment systems to support this intervention have been developed, but to date we have little evidence of these systems' outcomes when used at a broad scale in community-based preschool programs. For this broad purpose, two research questions were addressed: (a) How much progress do children make on language and early literacy skills over the course of one school year? And (b) What is the relationship between child characteristics, baseline performance, and growth on language and early literacy skills? Results indicated growth over time for all measures and relations between child age, gender, and free-or-reduced-price status and students' performance at the beginning of the school year, but (with one exception) no relation between these covariates and growth over time. Discussion centers on current status of language and early literacy assessment in early childhood education as well as needs and issues to be addressed in future research and program development."Citation: Kincaid, A., McConnell, S. R., & Wackerle-Hollman, A. K. (2020). Assessing early literacy growth in preschoolers using Individual Growth and Development Indicators. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 45(3), 173-183. The research study is available online: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327754529_Assessing_Early_Literacy_Growth_in_Preschoolers_Using_Individual_Growth_and_Development_Indicators>.

This manual is a compendium of all relevant information about content and item development, reliability and validity, norming, and score definitions for myIGDIs Early Numeracy by Renaissance.Email research@renaissance.com to request a copy of the technical manual from the Renaissance Research Department.

From the abstract: "Studies have shown that item difficulty can vary significantly based on the context of an item within a test form. In particular, item position may be associated with practice and fatigue effects that influence item parameter estimation. The purpose of this research was to examine the relevance of item position specifically for assessments used in early education, an area of testing that has received relatively limited psychometric attention. In an initial study, multilevel item response models fit to data from an early literacy measure revealed statistically significant increases in difficulty for items appearing later in a 20-item form. The estimated linear change in logits for an increase of 1 in position was .024, resulting in a predicted change of .46 logits for a shift from the beginning to the end of the form. A subsequent simulation study examined impacts of item position effects on person ability estimation within computerized adaptive testing. Implications and recommendations for practice are discussed."Citation: Albano, A. D., Cai, L., Lease, E. M., & McConnell, S. R. (2019). Computerized adaptive testing in early education: Exploring the impact of item position effects on ability estimation. Journal of Educational Measurement, 56(2), 437-451.

From the abstract: "The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new Individual Growth and Development Indicators-Español (IGDIs-E). We developed and tested two Spanish oral language measures: Identificación de los Dibujos/Picture Naming and Verbos (Expresivo)/Expressive Verbs with 976 Spanish-speaking preschoolers (4-5-years old; 50% female) across five states. Children were tested in Spanish in fall, winter, and spring across two academic years. Results provide evidence that the new IGDIs-E are psychometrically sound with no significant bias between genders and dialects of Spanish spoken in the United States. Cumulative results, the utility of the final measures, and the implications for data-based decision making with Spanish-speaking preschoolers is discussed." Citation: Durán, L. K., Wackerle-Hollman, A. K., Kohlmeier, T. L., Brunner, S. K., Palma, J., & Callard, C. H. (2019). Individual Growth and Development Indicators-Español: Innovation in the development of Spanish oral language general outcome measures. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 48, 155-172The research study is available online: <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED596096.pdf>.

From the abstract: "Spanish speakers in the United States are a steadily increasing population, up by 233% since 1980. Given the growing population of dual language learners (DLLs) and the large numbers of Spanish-speaking children enrolled in pre-kindergarten programs, addressing the educational needs of preschool-aged DLLs has become a national imperative. Specifically, the intersection of this growing population and the dearth of appropriate assessment tools to evaluate DLLs early language and literacy skills creates a need for assessments that accurately measure preschool performance. This manuscript reports on the iterative design process of a measure of Spanish phonological awareness for preschool-aged DLLs: Spanish Individual Growth and Development Indicators (S-IGDI) Primeros Sonidos. We employed measure design framework to develop the measure and tested item function within a study of 970, 4-5 year old DLLs. Results, including item level analyses and evidence regarding construct and criterion validity are reported."Citation: Wackerle-Hollman, A., Durán, L., Brunner, S., Palma, J., Kohlmeier, T., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2019). Developing a measure of Spanish phonological awareness for preschool age children: Spanish Individual Growth and Development Indicators. Educational Assessment, 24(1), 33-56. The research study is available online: <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED595878.pdf>.

This manual is a compendium of all relevant information about myIGDIs Profile of Preschool Learning and Development Readiness (ProLADR).Email research@renaissance.com to request a copy of the technical manual from the Renaissance Research Department.