Assessing educational outcomes in middle childhood: validation of the Teacher Academic Attainment Scale

Abstract

SEN Special educational needs TAAS Teacher Academic Attainment Scale WIAT-II Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, 2nd (UK) editionAIM Assessing educational outcomes in high-risk populations is crucial for defining long-term outcomes. As standardized tests are costly and time-consuming, we assessed the use of the Teacher Academic Attainment Scale (TAAS) as an outcome measure.METHOD Three hundred and forty three children in mainstream schools aged 10 to 11 years (144 males, 199 females; 190 extremely preterm and 153 term; mean age 10y 9mo, SD 5.5mo, range 9y 8mo-12y 3mo) were assessed using the reading and mathematics scales of the criterion standard Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, 2nd (UK) edition (WIAT-II). Class teachers completed the TAAS, a seven-item questionnaire for assessing academic attainment. The TAAS was also completed at 6 years of age for 266 children.RESULTS Cronbach's alpha 0.95 indicated excellent internal consistency, and the correlation between TAAS scores at 6 and 11 years indicated good test-retest reliability (r=0.77, p<0.001). Significantly higher TAAS scores for term vs preterm children demonstrated discriminative validity. TAAS scores at 6 and 11 years were significantly correlated with WIAT-II reading (r=0.69 and 0.75, p<0.001) and mathematics (r=0.75 and 0.82, p<0.001) scores, demonstrating good predictive and concurrent validity respectively. TAAS scores of <2.5 were good predictors of learning difficulties. INTERPRETATIONThe TAAS is a brief, psychometrically sound teacher-report of academic attainment that yields continuous and categorical outcomes. It provides a cost-and time-efficient outcome measure for large-scale studies.Longitudinal studies of high-risk populations have shown that early insult to the developing brain can have major consequences that persist far beyond the initial period of recovery. Even in the absence of neurosensory disabilities, infants may be at risk of more subtle residual impairments that impact upon school performance. The adverse effects of perinatal illness on educational outcomes have been documented for a range of high-risk populations including infants who required surgery, 1 those with neonatal encephalopathy, 2 meningitis in infancy, 3 and children born preterm 4,5 or small for gestational age. 6 Quantifying scholastic performance is crucial for assessing the spectrum of long-term outcomes in epidemiological and cohort studies. Formal norm-referenced tests of academic attainment are frequently used as outcome measures but require administration by qualified examiners, are costly and time consuming, and are often difficult to implement in largescale investigations. Furthermore, cross-cultural studies often necessitate the use of different language-and curriculumspecific outcome measures, making international comparisons problematic, both conceptually and statistically.Teachers are well placed to comment on a child's school performance, and previous studies have shown that they are able to provide accurate judgements of attainment compared wit...

Mathematics difficulties in extremely preterm children: evidence of a specific deficit in basic mathematics processing

“…The observed between-group discrepancies in performance are consistent with previous studies that have reported significant deficits in academic performance in EP children, with the most substantial differences in standardized measures of attainment in mathematics as compared with other school subjects (3,14,17).…”

“…EP children did not perform as well as control children on either of these scales; EP children had greater difficulty with processing simultaneously presented information rather than sequentially presented information, a result replicating those of previous studies (13,14). In fact, simultaneous, rather than sequential, processing score was a stronger predictor of WIAT-MS for the EP group; the reverse was true for control children.…”

“…ACKNOWLEDGMENT summary data used in this paper have been published previously (3,9,14), but the analysis presented here takes a different approach to the data in order to more fully understand the specific difficulty that very preterm children have with mathematics, and to tease out factors that may contribute to the observed problems in mathematical processing for this group. …”

“…Although there is considerable individual variation in outcomes, as a group, EP children have poorer academic attainment than term-born peers across all school subjects (9,14) and up to two-thirds have some special educational needs (3). One of the most consistent findings is that EP children have specific difficulties with mathematics that impact markedly their academic attainment (13,15).…”

Learning disabilities among extremely preterm children without neurosensory impairment: Comorbidity, neuropsychological profiles and scholastic outcomes

“…Ratings were on a five point likert scale and ranged from one (very below average) to five (very above average). The TAAS has excellent validity when compared with results on gold standard achievement tests [34]. Teachers were also asked to specify whether the child had SEN, defined in the UK as a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made, or the child has a disability which prevents or hinders him or her from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for other children of the same age in mainstream schools [35].…”