The following message is  posted on behalf of Laura Westberg

 

Dr. Sticht:

I am happy to clarify our findings in regard to the questions you have raised. 

The mean grade equivalent reported in the table is the calculation of change in TABE score from pretest to post test.  We determined a reasonable benchmark for post testing on the TABE and asked teachers to test students after approximately 20 hours of reading instruction. However, in reality, this is not what always occurred.  In fact, reading instructional hours for adult students ranged from 1 to 74 hours as reported by the teachers and 49% of the students had less than 20 hours of reading instruction. 

Therefore, to better understand the types of gains that students were making in relation to the amount of reading instruction they received, we calculated a gain per instructional hour based on the total reading instructional hours reported by the teachers for the students.  Year 1 students had an average gain per instructional hour of .10 and Year 2 students had an average gain of .08.  Thus, in year 1 for every one hour of reading instruction, they gained an average of .10 grade levels and in year 2 for every one hour of reading instruction they gained an average of .08 grade levels.  This translates into an average of 10-12.5 hours of reading instruction to raise a student's score on the TABE by one grade level. 

Please let me know if any further clarification would be helpful.

 

Laura Westberg

Director, Research/Special Projects

National Center for Family Literacy

325 West Main Street, Suite 300

Louisville, KY 40202-4237

Phone: 502-584-1133 x172

Fax: 502-584-0172

Email: lwestberg at famlit.org

Web: http://www.famlit.org

 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of tsticht at znet.com
Sent: Sun 6/15/2008 10:53 AM
To: familyliteracy at nifl.gov
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1120] Re: Family literacy findings releasedtodayshow one grade level gain for every 10-13 hours of instruction



combined, for the 82 students the pre-test score was 4.96 and the post-test
score was 5.89 for a gain of 1.03 years.

Where I get puzzled is when the report states, Quote:" For adult learners in
Year 1 these results translate to an average of one grade-level gain for
every 10 hours of reading instruction. For Year 2 students it is an average
of one grade-level gain for every 12.5 hours of reading instruction." End
Quote  If, as stated in the report,   pre-and post-tests were separated by
20 hours of reading instruction how was gain in 10 hours or 12.5 hours of
instruction determined?  And how does the phrase "for every" enter in if
only one set of pre- and post-test scores were obtained for each student,
presumably after 20 hours of reading instruction?

Help please!!
Tom Sticht

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