Use and Impact of PIRLS
Results from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 data will supply the United States with a fourth year of benchmarking data on the performance of US fourth grade students in reading and literacy. Media and government sites used data from previous administrations of PIRLS to inform discussion of US policy, national and cross-national comparisons of the performance of subgroups in the United States, and general information on reading and literacy.
For example, media outlets publicized results from PIRLS 2011, noting an increase in studentsʼ overall average scores compared with 2006 and 2001.78,79 Other media sources used the findings to highlight cross-national comparisons of achievement gaps such as gender differences in studentsʼ reading performance. In some cases, analyses focused on US scores in comparison with international benchmarks in reading and classroom management processes. The PIRLS 2011 results informed discussions of the countryʼs performance on specific subscales, such as interpreting figurative and complex language, or literary and informational scores.
The addition of ePIRLS in 2016 provides information about the success of students in Grade 4 with computer-based informational reading, requiring students to demonstrate reading comprehension in a different context than that used for the standard PIRLS assessment. These results will provide measures of US students’ online reading proficiency, ability to navigate between online texts, and ability to extract and integrate online information.
The US Department of Educationʼs National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the nationʼs primary resource for US PIRLS information, including PIRLS data and documentation, technical reports, and publications. The NCES PIRLS International Data Explorer (IDE) allows users to create statistical charts and tables online with PIRLS data. Since the PIRLS IDE release in 2010, NCES has tracked approximately 25,900 visits to its website. Use of PIRLS results in the United States can be tracked by visits to the PIRLS webpage on the NCES website. There were nearly 15,000 visits in December 2012 immediately following the release of the 2011 national report; in comparison, the PIRLS webpage averaged more than 4,000 visits per month during 2013. Documents and publications continue to be downloaded from the website, showing sustained interest in PIRLS.