Mr. Beckeman's Blog

One of the initiatives in place to support Reeths-Puffer High School’s school improvement goal of improving students’ reading comprehension is the collection of data through the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI).  This assessment provides a snapshot of students’ level of reading comprehension based on two key factors.  These factors are sentence length and word frequency.  Data from the SRI is reported as a Lexile score.  While Lexile scores are not meant to be grade level equivalents, Lexile ranges have been established for grade levels to indicate whether students’ performance puts them at the at risk, basic, proficient or advanced level.  This is helpful information for the classroom teacher as they consider student interaction with the reading materials in their courses. 

Because data has been collected from the SRI for multiple years, it is now possible to consider student performance longitudinally.  Before doing so, however, an essential statistical concept must be addressed.  Standard error of measurement or SEM is the degree of movement– either positive or negative – which must occur in order before student improvement or decline can be called significant.  The SEM for the SRI is 56 Lexile points either up or down.  Student performance at each grade level has been analyzed over multiple assessment periods taking the SEM into account. 

The current 9^thgraders have taken the SRI four times between 1/10 and 2/11.  During this time, 181 (60%) students have improved their Lexile score by more than 56L.  During this same time period, 23 (8%) students have seen a decline in the Lexile score of more than 56L.  And 99 (32%) students have shown a change in Lexile which is within the SEM of 56L so changes their Lexile scores are not considered statistically significant.

Tenth graders have also taken the SRI four times during the same time period.  The performance of our tenth graders does not parallel that of the ninth grade class.  129 (47%) students have improved their Lexile score by more than 56L.  46 (17%) students have shown a decline of more than 56L.  And 101 (37%) students have not improved their reading comprehension skills more than 56L which means that 37% of this class has not made statistically significant improvement in reading comprehension during this thirteen month period. 

The current eleventh grade class has taken the SRI more times than any other grade level.  Therefore, we are able to look at the performance of this grade over a longer time period.  Between 2/09 and 2/11, the eleventh graders have taken the SRI six times.  Longitudinal results show that during this time period, 192 (60%) eleventh graders have improved their Lexile score by more than 56L.  During this same time period, 44 (14%) students showed a decline of more than 56L.  And finally 82 (26%) students have shown neither statistical improvement nor decline. 

While overall progress is occurring, further inquiry must occur to determine why some students are showing a decline in their reading comprehension abilities.  We must also continue to look at instructional strategies which will move all students into the proficient and advanced performance bands.