The Correlations between Teacher Assessment of Second Graders’ Reading Abilities and Their Performance on Subtests of the Test of Cognitive Skills

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships between teacher assessment of students' reading abilities and the students' performance on the subtests of the Test of Cognitive Skills – Second Edition - Level 1. The need for the study was prompted by the movement of districts to utilize more authentic means of assessing reading ability and explore their consequent validity. It was also to determine if teachers are focusing in a particular cognitive domain when assessing the reading abilities of their students. Fifty-five heterogeneously grouped third grade students who attend an intermediate school in a western New York suburb served as the subjects of the study. Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) levels, identified by second grade teachers using running reading records, were compared with Test of Cognitive Skills – Second Edition - Level (TCS/2 - Level 1) subtest scores. The data were then analyzed using the Pearson product moment correlation to determine if any strong relationships (r ? .5000) existed between the assigned DRP levels and the subtests of sequences, memory, analogies, and verbal reasoning. After the data were analyzed, it was found that a strong correlation (r = .5193) existed between the DRP levels, which ultimately represented higher achieving readers, and scores on the verbal reasoning subtest of the Test of Cognitive Skills - Second Edition – Level 1. This correlation was also found to be significant at the .001 level.