26:T50c,

School climate can have a notable impact on student academic, social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. It is also a critical component of school improvement efforts, as demonstrated by recent federal and state initiatives to provide resources and supports for increased school climate measurement, accountability, and improvement. The primary purpose of the current study was to establish measurement invariance of the Georgia School Climate Survey across gender and race/ethnicity among middle school students. The secondary purpose was to explore mean comparisons in school climate experiences across student groups. Participants included 629,584 middle and high school students. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a hierarchical model of school climate that included one overall factor, school climate, and eight subscales: school connectedness, civic engagement, physical environment, adult social support, peer social support, cultural acceptance, order and discipline, and safety. Measurement invariance for a subscale model of school climate across gender and race/ethnicity was established, and student means across groups were compared. Implications for the practical use of the GSCS as a school improvement tool to guide targeted and data-based decision are discussed.

27:T53f,

The Assessment of Culturally and Contextually Relevant Supports (ACCReS) was developed in response to the need for well-constructed instruments to measure teachers’ cultural responsiveness and guide decision-making related to professional development needs. The current study sought to evaluate the presence of differential item functioning (DIF) in ACCReS items and the magnitude of DIF, if detected. With a national sample of 999 grade K-12 teachers in the United States, we examined measurement invariance of ACCReS items in relation to responses from (a) racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) youth and white teachers (teacher race), (b) teachers in schools with 0–50% and 51–100% REM youth (student race), and (c) teachers with <1–5 years of teaching experience and teachers with >5 years of experience. Findings suggested that ACCReS items exhibited negligible levels of DIF. The lack of DIF found provides additional evidence for the validity of scores from the ACCReS to assess teachers’ cultural responsiveness. Furthermore, descriptive analyses revealed that teachers were more likely to agree with items pertaining to their own classroom practice than items related to access to adequate training and support. Results inform implications for future educational and measurement research.

28:T47a,

The simple views of reading (SVRs) and writing (SVWs) reflect useful frameworks for the psychoeducational evaluation of literacy difficulties. They describe reading comprehension and written expression as the outcome of oral language, decoding, and transcription skills. Prior research has demonstrated that these components explain the vast majority of variance in comprehension and written expression. However, subtests’ specific task demands can influence the relationships among these components within the models. As a result, practitioners should know the degree to which various test batteries operationalize these frameworks. Using correlations from school-age participants provided in the technical manual, these analyses investigated the SVR and SVW within the Woodcock–Johnson IV battery through structural equation modeling. Results suggest that the battery’s measures conform to many of the expectations stemming from the SVR/SVW. However, its comprehension and written expression measures appear less language-influenced and more affected by decoding/spelling. Implications for psychoeducational practice are discussed.

29:T4b9,

This study examined the factorial validity and measurement invariance of the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale–Short Form (STRS-SF), modified by Whitaker et al. (2015), in th