Intervention research in education is sometimes criticized for the use of experimenter developed assessments, especially when these are over aligned with treatment. At the same time, intervention researchers sometimes prefer locally developed assessments because they appear to be more sensitive to treatment effects even when the test is not subject to the criticism of over alignment. This paper examines the question of test sensitivity to treatment effects for experimenter developed and standardized tests for the specific case of reading in grade 8. We examine similarities and differences between a specific experimenter developed test and widely used standardized reading assessment. Analyses show these particular tests to be quite comparable. The paper concludes with an examination of test sensitivity by simulating treatment effects of different magnitudes. These analyses highlight some potential limitations of the standardized test for detecting small to moderate effects depending on the ability range of the students participating in intervention. The implications for intervention research and identification of students under response to intervention are discussed.

教育干预研究有时因使用实验者开发的评估而受到批评，特别是当这些评估与治疗过度一致时。同时，干预研究人员有时更喜欢本地开发的评估，因为即使测试没有受到过度对齐的批评，它们似乎对治疗效果更敏感。本文研究了针对 8 年级阅读的特定案例的实验者开发和标准化测试对治疗效果的测试敏感性问题。我们检查了特定实验者开发的测试与广泛使用的标准化阅读评估之间的异同。分析表明，这些特定的测试具有相当的可比性。本文最后通过模拟不同幅度的治疗效果来检查测试敏感性。这些分析突出了标准化测试在检测小到中等影响方面的一些潜在局限性，具体取决于参与干预的学生的能力范围。讨论了干预研究和识别对干预做出反应的学生的影响。