DORA Validity
LGL Reading Assessment: Construct Validity
The validity of an assessment instrument refers to its ability to support valid assessment inferences. That is, do test results support a valid conclusion about a student's level of knowledge or skill? Building a valid test begins with accurate definitions of the constructs (i.e., the knowledge domains and skills) to be assessed. If the assessment activities in a test (i.e., the test items) tap into the constructs that the test is designed to assess, then the test has construct validity. Although additional factors affect overall test validity, construct validity is the basic logical bedrock of any test.
The construct validity of Let's Go Learn's reading assessments derives from the most current research-based and classroom-proven models of reading sub-skill acquisition and diagnostic reading assessment. These models are based on the work of Richard McCallum, Ph.D., a recognized expert in using diagnostic assessment to tailor instructional interventions precisely to students' individual profiles of reading sub-skill performance. Dr. McCallum is a co-founder of Let's Go Learn and is the company's Chief Educational Architect.
Richard McCallum has many years' experience training graduate students as reading specialists at Saint Mary's College and at UC Berkeley. During this period, he and his teams of classroom intervention specialists have also trained hundreds of elementary, middle and high school teachers to diagnose sub-skill deficiencies and to turn their at-risk students into strategic readers. He has conducted lectures and training seminars on reading instruction and assessment for district administrators and principals. Dr. McCallum combines superb scholarly and academic credentials with many years of practical experience in implementing extremely effective classroom instructional intervention. He is uniquely suited to guide and integrate Let's Go Learn's pioneering efforts in creating and expanding an online educational environment based on valid assessment and effective instruction.
LGL Reading Assessment: Criterion Validity
The nationally recognized CAL Reads program started by Dr. Richard McCallum utilized a battery of diagnostic reading assessments as an essential part of reading remediation. It has proven that using diagnostic assessment to guide targeted reading instruction can result in dramatic gains for students across differences in school attended, age, ethnicity, and gender. See our study on Targeted Instruction for recent results. It shows a 3 and 1.8 year gain for two schools' respective student-served groups, compared to control groups in both schools that made an average of only a 0.5 year gain.
Let's Go Learn designed its assessment to measure the same reading outcomes that CAL Reads measures in its reading assessments. Taking the CAL Reads reading intervention model created by Dr. McCallum and the need to make reading assessment and instruction more available to all students, Let's Go Learn's goal was to create an online assessment that would approximate the one-on-one assessments traditionally administered by reading experts like those of the CAL Reads program. Let's Go Learn succeeded in doing this by developing an intelligent and innovative custom-web application that mimics the decisions a reading specialist would make when administering traditional one-on-one reading assessments. During the pilot performed in early 2002, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education, Let's Go Learn demonstrated that its online assessment was highly correlated to similar reading assessments administered by reading specialists of the CAL Reads program. See our SBIR U.S. Department of Education Pilot Results report for the final pilot report submitted to the U.S. Department of Education.