Advances in assessment through research: What have we learned in the past 3 years?

The current article reviews research published in Assessment for Effective Intervention during the past 3 years. A total of 57 research articles were published during that period, with a current rejection rate of approximately 78%. A close examination of the pool of articles revealed seven overarching themes: behavioral assessment tools, group differences, interventions to improve student outcomes, legal and professional issues, conceptual models for practice, predictive validity, and psychometric properties of assessment tools. Although the category with the most articles (n = 19, 33%) was interventions to improve student outcomes, only 2 studies provided assessment data that evaluated the effectiveness of interventions. There were considerable data regarding the potential instructional implications of spelling assessment during this 3-year period, as well as an increase in studies that examined the diagnostic accuracy of various measures. The review of research and the proposed conceptual models for practice suggest that assessment data as gathered in schools should be used within a problem-solving framework to improve student outcomes.