Some reading comprehension research techniques measure progress at several points during the school year. The Measure of Academic Progress test is administered near the beginning and again at the end of the school year to measure student progress in all core subjects, including reading comprehension. The online test begins at the most basic level and then, as students answer questions correctly, moves to more and more rigorous questions until the test finds a point where the student can no longer answer questions. At that point, the computer gives the student a score that shows his current level in that subject. This research technique measures improvement over time.
Several reading comprehension research tests measure a student's ability to read aloud. One of these is the DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) test, which indicates how fluently a child can orally read from a written text. The teacher or testing coordinator gives this test on an individual basis to students for whom grade-level-appropriate texts have been chosen. The student reads aloud for one minute, and the tester counts errors, including skipped or substituted words as well as pauses for more than three seconds. The score tells how many words the student read correctly in a minute.
One of the ways that researchers can measure student recall of read texts includes having students retell a story they read earlier. Many students will read at high speed to excel at fluency assessments, but their speed is so fast that they cannot retain much. Retell assessments give a more accurate picture of the comprehension side of reading.
Another way to measure reading comprehension is to give "cloze format" questions as an assessment. Instead of multiple choice, cloze format gives students sentences and passages with blanks, and asks them to use content clues to fill in the blanks with words that make sense. There's not a particular word that will be more correct than another, as long as the words suit the context.