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Release Wireless Generation Signs Exclusive Agreement with Dr. Scott Paris to Provide Scaled Scores for Informal Reading Inventories New York, NY - November 19, 2002 - Wireless Generation, a pioneering handheld assessment company announced today that it has signed an exclusive arrangement with Scott Paris, of the University of Michigan, for Dr. Paris to establish scaled scores of informal reading inventories (IRIs) to be built into mCLASS®, the company's breakthrough observational assessment platform for handheld computers. As Dr. Paris explained in a recent article in The Reading Teacher, these scaled scores enable "a rigorous statistical procedure for analyzing conventional reading data derived from IRIs and any leveled text assessments." This is welcome news to districts whose teachers use IRIs for formative reading assessment and whose administrators would like to use the same data for analyzing and reporting district reading progress for state and federal accountability purposes. As Dr. Paris explained in a recent article in The Reading Teacher, these scale scores enable "a rigorous statistical procedure for analyzing conventional reading data derived from IRIs and any leveled text assessments." This is welcome news to districts whose teachers use IRIs for formative reading assessment and whose administrators would like to use the same data for analyzing and reporting district reading progress for state and federal accountability purposes. Over the past four years, Dr. Paris has developed statistical procedures - similar to those used with the SAT - required to calculate scaled scores according to student performance using informal reading assessments. When Dr. Paris' scaled scoring is integrated into the mCLASS assessment platform with any IRI, teachers are able to do both formative and summative assessments with the same data, something that could not be accomplished prior to now. Dr. Paris' technique will allow comparisons of student performance among different text levels. For example, a student answering 6 out of 8 questions correctly on a level 5 passage would receive a higher score than a student answering 6 of 8 correct on a level 4 passage. This will turn previously ambiguous scores into reliable and valid scaled scores, dramatically increasing the relevance and meaning of early reading comprehension assessments. Informal reading assessments are enormously popular with teachers throughout the United States as diagnostic tools to assist them with their day-to-day instructional needs. These informal reading assessments are designed to offer teachers specific assistance in teaching reading skills such as phonics, reading comprehension, and reading fluency, especially through their diagnostic components. They have not, however, been able to offer the kind of summative information on reading progress now needed by school personnel especially given the assessment component required by Reading First, the federal government's $5 billion 5-year early reading program. For example, using standard IRIs, a child might in the fall read a second grade level text with a 98% accuracy and answer 75% of the comprehension questions correctly. In the spring, the same child reads a third grade level passage with 94% accuracy and answers 50% of the questions correctly. These results do not permit any conclusive assessment of the student's progress over time. The expertise offered by Dr. Paris changes all that. It will now be possible to compare scores on passages, among students, and each student over time using informal reading inventories. Said Larry Berger, CEO of Wireless Generation "The marriage of Scott Paris's statistical techniques to our software platform for observational reading assessment can bring many observational reading assessments to a whole new level. Teachers will now get results that are far more scientifically valid, conclusive, and useful than many of these assessments have ever yielded before." Dr. Paris added, "Now classroom-administered reading assessments can be diagnostic guides for teachers and also provide scientifically-based measures of progress. I am delighted to see my work manifest in Wireless Generation's software, which is already enhancing early reading assessment in so many ways." Dr. Paris is a professor of psychology and a professor of education at the University of Michigan and is chair of the Graduate Studies Program in Psychology there. About Wireless Generation Wireless Generation is located at 11 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010. The company can be reached at 212 213-8177 and on the Web at www.wirelessgeneration.com. |
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