Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation (RISE)
The RISE (Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation) is a computer-administered diagnostic reading assessment for grades 4-9, which takes approximately one hour to complete. It looks at specific components of reading—such as word recognition and decoding or vocabulary—that may be impacting students’ success. These component reading skills are not directly assessed by other assessments, such as the SRI or the MCAS. The RISE helps to pinpoint areas of need in reading for individuals and for groups of students.
The RISE is scored by Educational Testing Service. Score reports are returned to schools in about two weeks. Teachers and administrators receive class profiles and individual student profiles. Profiles are color-coded by performance level (warning, needs improvement, proficient), making it easy to spot skill areas that should be targeted for extra instruction. RISE results can help identify students in need of intervention. Because results are broken out by skill area, reports also show areas of need for a class or grade (for example, many 7th graders might show needs in sentence structure). Over time, RISE results can help to monitor the progress that a school is making in particular aspects of teaching reading and can also show the impact of reading interventions.
The RISE was developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS) in collaboration with SERP and is currently being used in several large districts in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions. See rise.serpmedia.org for more details.
Video 1 of 2: About the RISE
Catherine Snow shares:
RISE is a diagnostic reading inventory designed for the Boston Public Schools to provide more detailed information as to why older students were reading below grade level • since various interventions have different approaches and goals BPS wanted to better match the student to the intervention's availability • practicality and timeliness an important part of design • computer administration allows for quick turnaround of data reports • data reports can be considered for determining the focus of a whole school • since the data reports show various domains, students profiles are very telling as to why certain students are struggling; therefore, instruction can be better focused on what they really need most
Video 2 of 2: A Closer Look at the Assessment
Catherine Snow discusses:
RISE assessment is administered to all students in STARI and Word Generation intervention programs, both control and treatment groups • information from the RISE assessment allows us to see the impact that interventions had on the different components of reading • RISE assesses six reading skills: word reading, vocabulary, morphology, efficiency of basic reading comprehension, word recognition and decoding • RISE is not useful at distinguishing readers at the higher proficiency levels • RISE is more sensitive at identifying issues in struggling readers • the RISE assessment profiles can help match students with appropriate interventions, including STARI • STARI intervention is appropriate for students who are proficient in word reading but have trouble in fluency and comprehension • schools can use RISE results to examine domains where most kids are showing a weakness • a ‘warning’ in word reading might indicate that students need a more targeted intervention, particularly if they are not scoring low in other components • sentence processing is often the subtest where students in urban schools are consistently low - this is because there is less information or context |students who score low on this subtest may not be familiar with standard phraseology • schools frequently want to know if there is a program to ‘fix’ sentence processing • this low score indicates that the student has not read enough and needs to be pushed to pay more attention to text • the first line of defense is very good, rich language and literacy instruction with reading instruction embedded in the curriculum (like STARI)
Sky Marietta explains:
why morphology is an essential skill for good readers • the difference between the literal and inferential questions in the reading comprehension assessment
This site was originally prepared for districts and teachers who partnered with us throughout the project. While we have updated the text, many of the videos included on this site were prepared during the launch of the study. Although the project has come to a close, we are keeping the site and related videos available for those who are interested to learn more about the project.
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305F100026 to the Strategic Education Research Partnership as part of the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.
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