Seth Leon

Accessible Reading Assessments for Students with Disabilities

Assessments developed and field tested for the mainstream student population may not be accessible for students with disabilities (SWDs) as a result of the impact of extraneous variables, including cognitive features, such as depth of knowledge required, grammatical and lexical complexity, lexical density, and textual/visual features. This study investigates the impact of these features on the performance outcomes of SWDs in the United States. Live test items from two different states with large numbers of SWDs were evaluated for their level of depth of knowledge features, linguistic complexity, two types of lexical features, and textual and visual characteristics. Results suggest that textual features have the greatest impact on the performance of students with different types of disabilities.

Accessibility of Segmented Reading Comprehension Passages for Students with Disabilities

This study explores factors that affect the accessibility of reading comprehension assessments for students with disabilities in grade 8 public school classrooms. The study consisted of assessing students using reading comprehension passages that were broken down into shorter “segments” or “chunks” in order to assess the validity and effectiveness of segmenting and the reliability of assessment in segmenting. The results of the segmenting study indicated that: (1) segmenting did not affect reading performance of students without disabilities; suggesting that it does not compromise the validity of reading assessment; (2) segmenting did not affect reading performance of students with disabilities; and (3) the segmented version had a higher reliability for students with disabilities without affecting the reliability for students without disabilities.

Supporting Common Core Instruction With Literacy Design Collaborative

The article examines the results of two quasi-experimental studies of the implementation and impact of the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC), an intervention designed to support secondary teachers’ transition to Common Core State Standards in English language arts. The first study examines LDC implementation by eighth-grade social studies and science teachers in districts across Kentucky; the second study is set in sixth-grade advanced reading classes in a large urban district in Florida. Based on teacher surveys, logs, and analysis of classroom artifacts, the LDC was implemented with reasonable fidelity across both studies. Based on available assessment scores, results show statistically significant positive effects in Kentucky for reading but no corollary effect in Florida. There were no significant differences in writing scores in either site. The conclusion shares hypotheses that may explain the differences in results and reflects on implications for evidence-based practice.

Using Entropy Balancing to Reduce the Effects of Selection Bias in Afterschool Studies: An Example in Studying the Relationship between Intensity of Afterschool Program Participation and Academic Achievement

Abstract Every since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) in the United States, achievement gains resulting from afterschool participation have been of particular interest. However, findings have been inconsistent. The challenge for researchers is partly due to the wide variation of program goals, difficulty in obtaining valid control groups, difficulty in obtaining clean records of data, the high transience rates of the students, and in particular, the failure to ifferentiate among the dosage students receive and the inherent potential of selection bias in the afterschool population. This study draw on a large dataset and allows for the analysis of effects over the course of several years. Using LAs BEST afterschool program as an example, this study employed advanced methodology to reduce selection bias in examining the relations between afterschool program participation and academic achievement. Keywords: afterschool program, participation, academic achievement, selection bias, LAs BEST ----- Bibliography: Huang, Denise/Leon, Seth/La Torre, Deborah: Using Entropy Balancing to Reduce the Effects of Selection Bias in Afterschool Studies: An Example in Studying the Relationship between Intensity of Afterschool Program Participation and Academic Achievement, IJREE, Vol. 5, Issue 1-2017, pp. 5-25. https://doi.org/10.3224/ijree.v5i1.01