A. Jackson Stenner

The Common Core State Standards’ Quantitative Text Complexity Trajectory Figuring Out How Much Complexity Is Enough

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) set a controversial aspirational, quantitative trajectory for text complexity exposure for readers throughout the grades, aiming for all high school graduates to be able to independently read complex college and workplace texts. However, the trajectory standard is presented without reference to how the grade-by-grade complexity ranges were determined or rationalized, and little guidance is provided for educators to know how to apply the flexible quantitative text exposure standard in their local contexts. We extend and elaborate the CCSS presentation and discussion, proposing that decisions about shifting quantitative text complexity levels in schools requires more than implementation of a single, static standard. A rigorous two-part analytical strategy for decision making surrounding the quantitative trajectory standard is proposed, a strategy that can be used by state policy makers, district officials, and educators in general. First, borrowing methods from student growth modeling, we illustrate an analytical method for creation of multiple trajectories that can lead to the CCSS end-of-high-school target for text complexity exposure, resulting in trajectories that place greater burden for shifting text complexity levels on students in different grades. Second, we submit that knowledge of the multiple possibilities, in conjunction with a set of guiding principles for decision making, can support educators and policy makers in critiquing and using the CCSS quantitative standard for text complexity exposure to establish particular expectations for quantitative text complexity exposure for particular students in situ.

Measuring Students' Writing Ability on a Computer-Analytic Developmental Scale: An Exploratory Validity Study.

The purpose of the study was to explore the validity of a novel computer-analytic developmental scale, the Writing Ability Developmental Scale. On the whole, collective results supported the validity of the scale. It was sensitive to writing ability differences across grades and sensitive to within-grade variability as compared to human-rated sensitivity. It predicted scores on the human-rated continuous scale very well. As compared to the human-rated continuous scale, it demonstrated similarly constant mean differences across ethnicity and socioeconomic status—although not for all rising grade differences or for gender. There was no genre differential across the two scales, and measurement precision was highly similar for the two scales.

On the Potential for Improved Measurement in the Human and Social Sciences

Geometry is the most ancient branch of physics. All linear measurement is essentially a form of practical geometry. Following Maxwell’s method of drawing analogies from geometry, Rasch conceptualized measurement models as analogous to scientific laws. Rasch likely absorbed Maxwell’s method via close and prolonged interactions with colleagues known for their use of it. Examination of the common form of the relationships posited in the Pythagorean theorem, multiplicative natural laws, and Rasch models leads to a new perspective on the potential unity of science. To be fully realized in the social sciences, Rasch’s measurement ideas need to be dissociated from statistics and IRT, and instead rooted in the Maxwellian sources Rasch actually drew from. Following through on the method of analogy from geometry may make human and social measurement more intuitive and useful.

Technological Assessment of Composing: Response to Reviewers

We thank the reviewers for their commentaries. Each review offered important critique that provides a forum for further discussion throughout the writing research community. We address two reviewer concerns that are perhaps foremost when considering measurement validity: the issue of consequential bases for score interpretation and the tension between the complexity of composing and parsimonious measurement of writing ability.

Examining text complexity in the early grades

The Common Core raises the stature of texts to new heights, creating a hubbub. The fuss is especially messy at the early grades, where children are expected to read more complex texts than in the past. But early-grades teachers have been given little actionable guidance about text complexity. The authors recently examined early-grades texts to discover what makes them complex and now report that there is a lot that can help teachers, specifically, young children’s texts are special, a handful of text characteristics can signal text-complexity level, sometimes the interplay of text characteristics modulates text-complexity level, and knowing why a text is complex can facilitate text selection.

Causal Rasch Models in Language Testing: An Application Rich Primer

Rasch’s unidimensional models for measurement are conjoint models that make it possible to put both texts and readers on the same scale. Causal Rasch Models (Stenner et al. Frontiers in Psychology 4:1–14, 2013) for language testing fuse a theory of text complexity to a Rasch Model making it possible for a computer to response illustrate texts read by language learners during daily practice. Causal Rasch Models are doubly prescriptive. First, they are prescriptive as to data structure (e.s., non-intersecting item characteristic curves.) Second, they are prescriptive as to the requirements of a substantive theory. One consequence of this fusion of a Rasch Model with a substantive theory is that individual-centered growth trajectories can be estimated for each reader even though no two readers ever read the same article or respond to a single common item. Rather than common items or common persons being the connective tissue that makes comparisons of readers possible, common theory is the connective tissue just as is true in, say, human temperature measurement where each person is paired with a unique thermometer. Thus, although the instrument is unique for each person on each occasion, a text complexity theory makes it possible to convert counts correct to a common reading ability metric in each and every application.

The Relationship of Korean Students’ Age and Years of English-as-a-Foreign-Language Exposure with English-Reading Ability: A Cross-Age Study

The purpose of the present cross-age study with South Korean students was to investigate the relationship of age and years of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) exposure with English-reading ability. The main research question was, “Do individuals’ age and number of years of English exposure interact in relation to English-reading ability?” The study also revealed the cross-age comparative status of South Korean students’ EFL reading ability.