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When education works, it works to the benefit of all. It creates productive, innovative citizens eager to contribute to a well-functioning democracy. In contrast, educational failure has lifelong c...

In Conjectures and Refutations, the philosopher of science Karl Popper (1962) stated that “the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability”...

The Cross-Battery Assessment (XBA) approach to identifying a specific learning disorder (SLD) is based on the postulate that deficits in cognitive abilities in the presence of otherwise average general intelligence are causally related to academic achievement weaknesses. To examine this postulate, we conducted a classification agreement analysis using the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities and Achievement. We examined the broad cognitive abilities of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory held to be meaningfully related to basic reading, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, and mathematics reasoning across age groups. Results of analyses of 300 participants in three age groups (6–8, 9–13, and 14–19 years) indicated that the XBA method is very reliable and accurate in detecting true negatives. Mean specificity and negative predictive value were 92% and 89% across all broad cognitive abilities and academic domains. Mean sensitivity and positive predictive values, however, were generally q...