Is the treatment weak or the test insensitive? David and Paulina will present their paper published in Learning and Individual Differences. Intervention research in education is often criticized for using assessments that may be too closely aligned with the treatment. This study examines whether standardized or researcher-developed reading assessments differ in their sensitivity to intervention effects. By analyzing similarities and differences between these test types, the authors show that both approaches can be comparable, but that standardized tests may underestimate moderate effects depending on student ability levels. The paper highlights how item difficulty and assessment design influence the detection of intervention effects and discusses implications for identifying students who may benefit most from reading interventions.
David J. Francis is Director of TIMES (Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics). His work focuses on educational measurement, psychometrics, language and literacy development, and quantitative methodology. David has led numerous large-scale, longitudinal, and intervention studies to understand how language background and instructional context influence educational outcomes, often using advanced statistical modeling, including multilevel and structural approaches, to improve assessment validity and intervention design. He has also helped shape policy related to bilingual education and equitable assessment practices.
Paulina A. Kulesz is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Houston (and part of TIMES) and an emerging leader in educational measurement, reading and language comprehension, and cognitive and psychometric modeling. Her research combines experimental, longitudinal, and advanced analytic methods to investigate how learner characteristics, test design, and contextual factors influence assessment outcomes and learning processes. Paulina’s work bridges applied psychometrics and educational practice—ranging from eye-tracking and item design to latent modeling and test validation. She has contributed to large-scale studies on reading and language development and has an expanding portfolio of methodological work that refines how researchers measure learning and interpret test data.