There is no denying the impact that the coronravirus disease (COVID‐19) outbreak has had on many aspects of our lives. This article looks at the potential impact of COVID‐19 on student learning as schools abruptly morphed into virtual learning environments using data from several instructional, practice, and assessment solutions offered by Renaissance. First, three hypothetical learning scenarios are considered using normative data from Star assessments to explore the potential impact on reading and math test performace. Next, data on Focus Skills are used to highlight which grades may have missed the most foundational math and reading content if instruction was stopped or reduced. Last, data from two of Renaissance's practice tools are used to evaluate whether students were practicing key skills following school closures. The article concludes that academic decline will likely occur but may be tempered by the increased use of practice tools; effects may look different for math and reading; and may impact grades and schools differently. As such, schools may need to leverage decision‐making frameworks, such as the Multi‐tiered Systems of Support/Response‐to‐Intervention (MTSS/RTI) framework, more than ever to identify needs and target instruction where it matters most when school begins in fall 2020.

Technical adequacy and information/cost return were examined for four early reading measures: the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), STAR Early Literacy (SEL), Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE), and the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI). All four assessments were administered to the same students in each of Grades K through 2 over a 5-week period; the samples included 200 students per grade from 7 states. Both SEL and DIBELS were administered twice to establish their retest reliability in each grade. We focused on the convergent validity of each assessment for measuring five critical components of reading development identified by the U.S. National Research Panel: Phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. DIBELS and TPRI both are asserted to assess all five of these components; GRADE and STAR Early Literacy explicitly measure all except fluency. For all components, correlations among relevant subtests were high and comparable. The pattern of intercorrelations of nonfluency measures with fluency suggests the tests of fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and word reading are measuring the same underlying construct. A separate cost-benefit study was conducted and showed that STAR Early Literacy was the most costeffective measure among those studied. In terms of amount of time per unit of test administration or teachers' time, CAT (computerized adaptive testing) in general, and STAR Early Literacy in particular, is an attractive option for early reading assessment. ResuméL'adéquation technique et les données reliées aux coûts par rapport aux dépenses ont été examinées pour les outils d'évaluations suivants: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), STAR Early Literacy (SEL), Group Reading Assessment

Computer adaptive assessments were used to monitor the academic status and growth of students with emotional behavior disorders (EBD) in reading (N = 321) and math (N = 322) in a regional service center serving 56 school districts. A cohort sequential model was used to compare that performance to the status and growth of a national user base of more than 7,500,000 students without disabilities. Consistent with numerous previous findings, status or level of performance of students with EBD was consistently low relative to their nondisabled peers. However, for the most part the students with significant EBD demonstrated rates of growth similar to the nationwide sample of nondisabled peers. There was considerable variability in the academic growth of students across grades and between treatment programs, and this variability is described and discussed. Implications for policy and practice in student progress monitoring and teacher evaluation systems are discussed. K E Y W O R D Sacademic growth, emotional and behavioral disorders, progress monitoring With increased interest in accountability for the academic performance of all students, educators increasingly are scrutinizing the academic status and growth of students with disabilities relative to their age and grade level peers.The authors have found in their interactions with educators and school psychologists a generally held belief in the low academic status and growth of students with EBD relative to others. Issues of status and growth are taking on increased importance as students with EBD are included in district and state accountability systems and especially as teachers are being held accountable for their progress as part of teacher evaluation systems (Holheide, Browder, Warren, Buzick, & Jones, 2012). There is increasing reluctance to have scores and performance of students with EBD "count" in evaluations of programs and teachers. In this paper the actual growth for students with EBD is examined as is the setting of academic growth targets or goals for those students. First considered is research on the status of students with EBD relative to others and on the amount of growth they demonstrate in an academic year. It will be noted that to date most of the information in the literature is based on cross-sectional studies. That is, researchers Psychol Schs. 2017;54:792-807. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pits c 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 792 YSSELDYKE ET AL. 793have examined the performance status and growth of students with EBD across grades (e.g., grades 3-9) by taking single-score "slices" of performance at a point in time (e.g., end-of-year scores on summative measures) within a year.Such studies do not help educators and school psychologists get an accurate picture of actual growth, nor do they establish growth expectations or goals. There are fewer investigations of the amount of growth that students with EBD demonstrate within an academic year. In this paper, the results of a 2-year investigation in which the investigators monitored the academic pr...

Because math fact automaticity has been identified as a key barrier for students struggling with mathematics, we examined how initial math achievement levels influenced the path to automaticity (e.g., variation in number of attempts, speed of retrieval, and skill maintenance over time) and the relation between attainment of automaticity and gains in general math achievement. Findings indicated that most students did not meet the grade level recommendations for addition and subtraction identified by standards-setting organizations, but those that did were likely to achieve superior gains in math achievement, controlling for pretest scores. Relative to higher-achieving students, low-achieving students required more attempts to demonstrate automaticity, achieved automaticity later, and their speed of retrieval was lagging. Overall, low-achieving students were less likely to demonstrate fluent retrieval of math facts, but those that did also experienced particularly large gains in general math achievement.

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