
Description
In this CASEL Measuring SEL blog, James Soland shares how work with Santa Ana Unified School District led to new insights on how item response times and test metadata may provide insight into student SEL.
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This study compared the test taking disengagement of students taking a remotely administered an adaptive interim assessment in spring 2020 with their disengagement on the assessment administered in-school during fall 2019.
By: Steven Wise, Megan Kuhfeld, John Cronin
Topics: Equity, Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement


This study evaluates the effects of asking items throughout the passage (i.e., embedding items) to achieve a more precise measure of reading comprehension by removing barriers for students to demonstrate their understanding. Results showed a significant impact of embedding comprehension items within reading passages on the measurement of student achievement in comparison to answering items at the end of the passage.
By: Meg Guerreiro, Elizabeth Barker, Janice Johnson
Topics: Equity, Innovations in reporting & assessment, Reading & language arts


This study examined the stability of social-emotional learning (SEL) skills and the extent to which students’ initial level in SEL skills in 6th grade and growth in SEL skills from 6th to 8th grade are related to students’ successful transition to secondary school. Findings suggest that understanding how a student develops social-emotionally can improve identification of students not on track to succeed in high school.
By: James Soland, Megan Kuhfeld
Topics: High school, Middle school, Social-emotional learning


Six insights regarding test-taking disengagement
There has been increasing concern about the presence of disengaged test taking in international assessment programs and its implications for the validity of inferences made regarding a country’s level of educational attainment. In this paper, the author discusses six important insights yielded by 20 years of research on this and implications for assessment programs.
By: Steven Wise


Predictors and consequences of school mobility in middle childhood
This study examined family factors associated with school mobility and if either a move during the previous year or cumulative moves across elementary school were related to child functioning. School mobility during elementary school did not appear to be a pervasive risk although the authors were unable to study very high rates of school mobility because of very small sample sizes.
By: Deborah Lowe Vandell, Megan Kuhfeld, Elizabeth Gershoff, Robert Crosnoe
Topics: Middle school, Social-emotional learning


The impact of disengaged test taking on a state’s accountability test results
This study investigated test-taking engagement on a large-scale state summative assessment. Overall, results of this study indicate that disengagement has a material impact on individual state summative test scores, though its impact on score aggregations may be relatively minor.
By: Steven Wise, Jonghwan (Jay) Lee, Sukkeun Im
Topics: Equity, Measurement & scaling, School & test engagement


Variation in respondent speed and its implications: Evidence from an adaptive testing scenario
The more frequent collection of response time data is leading to an increased need for an understanding of how such data can be included in measurement models. Models for response time have been advanced, but relatively limited large-scale empirical investigations have been conducted. We take advantage of a large data set from the adaptive NWEA MAP Growth Reading Assessment to shed light on emergent features of response time behavior.
By: Benjamin Domingue, Klint Kanopka, Ben Staug, James Soland, Megan Kuhfeld, Steven Wise, Chris Piech
Topics: Innovations in reporting & assessment, School & test engagement