Welcome, everyone! My name is Michael Matta, and I am a research scientist in educational measurement in the PASS Lab. My research interests include the development and validation of automated methods of academic skills and behaviors of school-aged students. I have also examined the negative consequences of test bias of traditional and automated assessments of academic skills on educational decisions against students from historically marginalized groups. I am the Project Coordinator for an IES grant aimed at developing writeAlizer, a free and open-source computer program for the automated scoring of student writing performance.
PhD in Clinical Psychology, 2018
University of Milano Bicocca
MA in Clinical Psychology, 2014
University of Milano Bicocca
BSc in Psychology, 2011
University of Milano Bicocca
Written expression curriculum-based measurement (WE-CBM) is a formative assessment approach for screening and progress monitoring. To extend evaluation of WE-CBM, we compared hand calculated and automated scoring approaches in relation to the number of screening samples needed per student for valid scores, the long-term predictive validity and diagnostic accuracy of scores, and predictive and diagnostic bias for underrepresented student groups. Second- to fifth-grade students (n = 609) completed five WE-CBM tasks during one academic year and a standardised writing test in fourth and seventh grade. Averaging WE-CBM scores across multiple samples improved validity. Complex hand-calculated metrics and automated tools outperformed simpler metrics for the long-term prediction of writing performance. No evidence of bias was observed between African American and Hispanic students. The study will illustrate the absence of test bias as necessary condition for fair and equitable screening procedures and the importance of future research to include comparisons with majority groups.