Generalizability (G) theory was used with a sample of 37 third-grade students to assess the variability in words correct per minute (WCPM) scores caused by student skill and pas sage variability. Reliability-like coefficients and the SEM based on a specific number of assess ments using different combinations of passages demonstrated how manipulating probe vari ability could reduce measurement error. Results showed that 81 % of the variance was due to student skill, 10% was due to passage or probe variability, and 9% was due to unac counted sources of error. Reliability-like coeffi cients ranged from .81 to .99, and SEMs ranged from 18 to 4 WCPM depending on the number of probes given. When passage vari ability was controlled, SEMs were decreased and ranged from 12 to 4 WCPM. Results indi cated that WCPM scores yield high reliability- like coefficients but also have a large SEM that can be reduced by administering multiple alternate passages. Discussion focuses on con ducting research designed to identify more equivalent passages in order to reduce erro neous relative and absolute decisions.

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Using an experimenter-developed system, articles from four school psychology journals for the years 2000-2005 (n = 929) were classified. Results showed that 40% of the articles were narrative, 29% correlational, 16% descriptive, 8% causal-experimental, 4% causal-comparative, and 2% were meta-analytic. Further analysis of the causal-experimental studies suggested that both singlesubject and group designs were used to evaluate the effects of interventions delivered in schools (setting data) that improved students' (participant data) academic and/or social behaviors (target behavior data). Although results show that these journals are publishing few experimental studies, the experiments that are published appear to be derived from field-based research evaluating interventions that readers may find useful for remedying problems in school settings. Discussion focuses on factors that may limit experimental studies and recent trends in education and school psychology. C 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Assessment data are used to make treatment recommendations for students with mild disabilities. However, no assessment procedures exist that allow one to predict with certainty that one academic intervention will be more effective than another academic intervention for a particular student with mild disabilities. Therefore, hypotheses regarding intervention effectiveness should be tested by assessing students' learning rates under different instructional procedures. In this demonstration, alternating treatment designs are used to show how more precise measurement of instructional time can impact the assessment of relative learning rates when students are exposed to more than one intervention. Discussion centers around the importance of time as a contextual variable when assessing the effects of academic interventions.