Vocabulary Assessment Study in Education (VASE)
Teachers and researchers across California developed and tested a new method of vocabulary assessment. Funded by a grant from the United States Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences and the National Center for Educational Research, the goal of the Vocabulary Assessment Study In Education (VASE) was to develop a vocabulary assessment based on words actually taught in classrooms that provides teachers with both summative and diagnostic information about vocabulary knowledge and growth in 4th and 5th grades.
While other measures of vocabulary knowledge rest on a student’s ability to define a word or to figure out its meaning from context, the VASE Assessment captures a broader base of knowledge than these strictly definitional measures. The assessment measures incremental word knowledge via a six-question progression called a testlet that enables students to demonstrate gradations of knowledge about each word (see VASE sample item). The VASE Assessment is designed to be given twice a year to measure growth in breadth of grade-level vocabulary and in aspects of word knowledge. If given in both grades, the VASE Assessment enables educators to track student vocabulary knowledge from the start of fourth grade through the end of fifth.
The grant involved over 1400 4th and 5th grade students, 9 school districts across California, and 34 teachers. The student population was drawn from urban, rural and suburban settings with 52% speaking another language at home (34 different heritage languages), approximately 1/3 were English Learners and 40% were eligible for free or reduced lunch.
We also developed a word bank and lessons and activities that use words found across the curriculum in 4th and 5th grades. The words for the assessment and lessons were selected by experienced teachers who identified them as unfamiliar to typical students at these grade levels. Words that were too difficult or rare for 4th and 5th graders were dropped, as were words that students had limited exposure to through their classroom texts and materials. The activities and lessons were adapted from the VINE vocabulary project by teachers who were developing word conscious classrooms. In addition, resources for researchers in the field of vocabulary and academic language are available in the VASE Research section of this website.
Current Status of VASE
VASE was a five-year federally funded research project to develop a new method of vocabulary assessment through a collaboration between the University of California-Santa Cruz, the University of California-Merced, and school districts across five regions of California. The overarching performance goal for VASE was to produce a “set of tests to measure proficiency in vocabulary knowledge for science and language arts across the fourth and fifth grades.” We have met and exceeded that goal with a set of psychometrically sound tests that cover aspects of vocabulary knowledge deemed important in the field of vocabulary research (e.g., depth of word knowledge, longitudinal growth, measures of multiple dimensions of word knowledge, measures of incremental growth) but rarely measured. We also expanded our focus to math and social studies vocabulary (in addition to science and language arts), and created both diagnostic reports (used to target appropriate instruction), and annual summative reports. Marginal reliability for the VASE tests are greater than or equal to .94 and they have been validated against other California assessments. These assessments have been used in research, but, unfortunately, their scope has been limited to “proof of concept” work, as additional development wasn’t funded due to the adoption of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) and CCSS-ELA assessments by PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Representatives from both PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium found VASE intriguing, but their very tight timelines and rigid assessment specifications did not leave room for considering additional models of vocabulary testing.