Today's focus on high-stakes standardized tests has had a massive impact on education throughout America, and standardized test preparation is one of the ugly, open secrets of education. Ever since 2001 when President Bush signed into law No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a bipartisan reauthorization of Johnson's landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, students have been bombarded with standardized tests from the earliest grades. Politicians believe these measures are the only way to remedy the perceived weaknesses in the education system because "stringent accountability mandates… [provide] vital levers of change, inclusiveness, and transparency of results" (Education Week, 2011, para. 15). Yet as time progresses, the quantity and importance of the exams increase to such proportions that, by the time students are in high school, their performance dictates whether they will graduate or attend college. While proponents of such exams say that they only test the skills that students ought to be learning anyway, the reality tends to be that teachers start to focus only on the specific questions the test will cover, and thereby lose the ability to provide full, comprehensive education. "Teaching to the test" is the much-maligned experience of most high schools. In order to combat the pressure students feel to perform and teachers feel to shortchange the learning experience, a "Build Your Own Adventure" manual designed around research-based principles demonstrated to improve student learning gains will allow students to focus on the key areas needed to improve test performance, demystify the test itself, and thus help students obtain score improvement. In so doing, students will not only perform better on standardized assessments, but ultimately be able to attend more elite colleges.

The intense focus on standards and accountability is rapidly altering the education environment. Often the gauge for measuring school effectiveness is performance on high- stake state tests. In this retrospective cohort comparison study, I observe the relation between the use of curriculum-based measures (CBMs) for reading and change on a state test for reading after implementation of systematic decision making (SDM). Over a span of three years, two student cohorts in two elementary schools were observed. In each two-year cohort, students began in third and then moved to fourth grade: Cohort One (2009 - 2011) and Cohort Two (2010 - 2012). Both cohorts participated in fall, winter, and spring [F-W-S] benchmark screening for Passage Reading Fluency (PRF) and took a state test. Additionally, during the 2011-2012 academic year, SDM was implemented for Cohort Two using reading CBMs. This study addressed three questions: (a) What is the affect on reading growth (OAKS-Reading) in the context of SDM with CBMs? (b) What is the correlation between [F-W-S] PRF and OAKS Reading? and (c) What is the relation between within-year growth rates for students at risk and not at risk in the context of SDM with CBMs? I used an independent samples t-test to examine the across year change in reading for both cohorts (OAKS-Reading) to determine whether the implementation of SDM resulted in a significant difference between cohorts. For Cohort Two (using a SDM model), I correlated benchmark screening within-year measures (easyCBM) and OAKS Reading. Finally, I calculated growth rates for at-risk and not-at-risk students within a SDM model to examine whether that model demonstrated evidence of accelerated growth in at-risk students relative to their not-at-risk peers. Results did not indicate a strong relation between SDM and the large-scale, outcome assessment (OAKS-Reading). A Pearson product-moment correlation indicated a strong positive correlation between the formative measure PRF and the large-scale, outcome assessment OAKS-Reading. Results showed both risk categories had accelerated growth in reading fluency between fall and winter compared to between winter and spring. Implications for school practice and research are discussed.