PIRLS and ePIRLS Results

Exhibit 3. Description of ePIRLS international reading benchmarks: 2016

Benchmark (score cut-point)	Description of ePIRLS benchmark skills
Advanced (625)	Students can make inferences from relatively complex online informational texts to support an explanation. They can interpret and integrate information within and across web pages with interactive features to explain relationships and show thorough understanding. Students can evaluate the effects of textual, visual, and interactive elements and begin to consider the writer's point of view.
High (550)	Students can make inferences to distinguish relevant information and provide comparisons when reading and viewing relatively complex online informational texts. They can interpret and integrate information within and across web pages with interactive features to provide examples and make contrasts. They can evaluate how graphic elements and language choices support content.
Intermediate (475)	Students can locate and reproduce information presented in various forms, including independent use of navigation features, when reading and viewing relatively complex online informational texts. They can make straightforward inferences to recognize reasons and actions. They can interpret and integrate information across a web page to recognize cause, comparisons, and explanations. Students can begin to evaluate the use of interactive features to convey information.
Low (400)	Students can locate and reproduce explicitly stated information from web pages in relatively complex online informational texts that contain text and a variety of dynamic, navigable features (e.g. timelines, pop-up boxes). They can begin to make straightforward inferences about descriptions.
NOTE: Score cut-points for the international benchmarks are determined through scale anchoring. Scale anchoring involves selecting benchmarks (scale points) on the achievement scales in terms of student performance and then identifying items that students scoring at the anchor points answer correctly. The score cut-points are set at equal intervals along the achievement scales. The score cut-points were selected to be as close as possible to the standard percentile cut-points (i.e., 90th, 75th, 50th, and 25th percentiles). More information on how the score cut-points were set can be found in the PIRLS and ePIRLS technical documentation at https://timssandpirls.bc.edu/publications/pirls/2016-methods.html.