Using Data To Assess Your Reading Program

Because literacy is the foundation for student achievement, every elementary school must periodically examine how effectively it teaches reading. In Using Data to Assess Your Reading Program, Emily Calhoun shows how a school or district team can use action research to evaluate students’ progress in reading, analyze instruction, and make changes that improve students' performance.

To help pinpoint strengths and weaknesses, Calhoun introduces a matrix for collectively assessing the variety of factors that affect the reading program, including
* School demographics and program participation;
* Scores from group-administered testing;
* Results of up-close performance measures;
* Teacher- and school-assigned indicators of performance;
* Skills in emergent literacy, reading vocabulary, and word analysis; and
* Student reading comprehension and habits.

The book includes more than two dozen forms and charts to help staff collect and integrate data into a comprehensive assessment that supports constructive change. All the forms are included on a helpful CD-ROM, so users can tailor them to their own needs.

With its proactive, problem-solving approach, Using Data to Assess Your Reading Program presents proven ways to increase curriculum coherence, build professional community, and lead students toward literacy.

Emily Calhoun is the director of the Phoenix Alliance, where she helps school, district, and state staff study the effects of curriculum and instruction on student learning. Calhoun is also the author of How To Use Action Research in the Self-Renewing School and Teaching Beginning Reading and Writing with the Picture Word Inductive Model.