MetaMetrics’ Gary Williamson and Robert Baker Win North Carolina Association for Research in Education Distinguished Paper Award
Research Paper Studies Student Growth in North Carolina State Reading and Mathematics Assessment Scores
DURHAM, N.C. — January 30, 2007 — MetaMetrics Inc. researchers Gary L. Williamson, Ph.D., and Robert Baker, Ph.D., are winners of the 2006 North Carolina Association for Research in Education (NCARE) Distinguished Paper Award. Along with their co-author, Charles Thompson, Ed.D., “Lora Wilson King Professor in Education” at East Carolina University, Williamson and Baker were honored for their research paper, “North Carolina’s Growth in Reading and Mathematics.” The award will be presented at the 2007 NCARE Annual Meeting, March 23, in Greensboro, N.C.
NCARE’s mission is to improve educational practice through the production and application of research and evaluation. The organization’s Distinguished Paper Award recognizes a paper previously presented at an NCARE conference that furthers its goals and represents the highest quality of academic research rigor. As a result of this award, Williamson and Baker will present this paper at the 2007 American Educational Research Association conference.
The paper studied 10 years of student scores, grades 3-8, on the North Carolina End-of-Grade Reading and Mathematics tests and analyzed how that growth has changed over time. Comparing growth in scores between grade levels and testing years, the results of this study provide other states with a benchmark for analyzing student growth on end-of-grade tests in the future.
“MetaMetrics is proud of Drs. Williamson and Baker for their contributions to rigorous research examining educational practice,” said Malbert Smith III, Ph.D., president. “We are committed to supporting our outstanding team of experienced psychometricians in their efforts to examine the ways in which assessment can be linked to improved student achievement.”
MetaMetrics is the Durham-based developer of The Lexile Framework® for Reading and The Quantile Framework® for Mathematics.
About MetaMetrics Inc.
MetaMetrics, a privately held educational measurement company, develops scientifically-based measures of student achievement that link assessment with instruction, foster better educational practices and improve learning by matching students to materials that meet and challenge their abilities. The company’s team of experienced psychometricians developed The Lexile Framework for Reading and its companion scale, The Quantile Framework for Mathematics. The Lexile Framework (www.Lexile.com) provides a common, developmental scale for matching reader ability and text difficulty. Lexile measures enable educators, parents and students to select targeted materials that can improve reading skills and to monitor reading growth across the curriculum, in the library and at home. Recognized as the most widely adopted reading measure, Lexiles are part of reading and testing programs in the classroom and at the district and state levels. More than 100,000 books, 80 million articles and 60,000 Web sites have Lexile measures, and all major standardized tests can report student reading scores in Lexiles. The Quantile Framework (www.Quantiles.com) measures mathematics achievement and the difficulty of mathematical skills and problems similar to the way Lexiles measure reading ability and text readability. Quantiles® identify the mathematical skills a student has mastered and those that require instruction, enabling educators to use Quantile measures to target instruction, monitor student development and forecast performance on high-stakes tests.