The Grade-6 Case
Grade 6 is different: neither product has a grade-6 list at all. This brief therefore answers two questions: whose grades 3–5 curriculum better carries a student into grade-6 tests, and what a grade-6 list should contain.
Readiness: Vocabulon, by a slight margin. The data do not support a stronger conclusion.
The one channel that survived every recomputation is answer-choice vocabulary (22.2% vs 17.3%). The tested-target lead did not survive reweighting and is discounted. VocabLoco holds counters of its own, listed below.
Construction: a 285-word grade-6 list, built from the tests, ships with this brief. It handles 41 of the top-50 tested grade-6 words. VocabLoco as-is handles 5.
0 + 0
grade-6 word lists currently shipped by either product
104
real grade-6 questions transcribed verbatim from 18 programs
22.2%
vs 17.3% answer-choice vocabulary covered; held up under every audit
285
words on the proposed evidence-built Vocabulon G6 list
Ground truth · The grade-6 booklets
What grade-6 items look like, including the ones VocabLoco wins
Colorado CMAS · Grade 6 · 2026monarchy — VocabLoco g5 · not on Vocabulon
Part A: What is the meaning of monarchy as it is used in the heading From Monarchy to Republic in the passage from Ancient Roman Civilization? A a government controlled by one leader at a time B an important city…
A VocabLoco win, and a hit behind its 3/7 vs 2/7 target edge on CMAS. VocabLoco's grade-5 page is its strongest asset going into grade 6: it wins the freshest-words (g5-only) comparison on every slice.
Florida FAST · Grade 6 · 2024revived — VocabLoco g5 · not on Vocabulon
"Mary put the patent in a drawer and, eventually, it expired. Several years later, someone else revived her idea, patented it, sold it…" What is the meaning of the word revived as it is used in this sentence?
A VocabLoco win, part of its 23–19 edge on verbatim-transcribed targets. On the same test, passage-support words run 7-to-1 the other way. Grade 6 is contested.
Massachusetts MCAS · Grade 6 · 2021choices are the vocab — Vocabulon words
Part A: What is the main purpose of paragraph 5 in the passage? A to build suspense B to introduce a theory C to present an argument D to establish the location
Here the answer options are themselves the vocabulary load: suspense (the key), theory, and argument are Vocabulon g4–5 words. Across 496 teachable tier-2/3 answer-choice words at grade 6, Vocabulon covers 22.2% and VocabLoco 17.3%. This is the one channel that got stronger under adversarial dedup.
New York NYS · Grade 6 · 2006shutout — neither list
"…there isn't much for Dr. Sullivan to be wary of in his practice." Which word means about the same as "wary"? A cautious B miserable…
NY grade 6 is a coverage shutout: 0 of 7 tested targets (wary, cowered, agility, captivated…) on either product. 76 of 104 verbatim targets are on neither list. Adding a grade-6 list matters more than the gap between the existing products.
PARCC / New Meridian · Grade 6 · 2018list-proof · multiple-meaning
Part A: What is the meaning of the word fluid in paragraph 2 of "What Do We Know About Volcanoes"? A. heavy, weighted B. moving freely, like water C. cloudy, smoky D. covering completely…
A common word tested in a secondary sense. 15 of 104 items are this style, plus 15 figurative and 13 affix/root items, so roughly 40% of grade-6 vocab points are list-proof. Evidence-paired formats also pay half of each point for locating the context clue.
New York NYS · Grade 6 · 2017 · constructed responsevocabulary graded as writing
Explain what the meaning of the word "contradicts" is as it is used in line 24 of the article. Use two details from the article to support your response.
NY uniquely grades vocabulary as writing: students must produce a definition and cite evidence. No list contains the point, though academic-metalanguage instruction helps scaffold it.
Exhibit A · Readiness by channel
A student finishes each product through grade 5 and sits a grade-6 test
Vocabulon 3–5VocabLoco 3–5
Answer-choice vocabulary · n=496 teachable tier-2/3 choice words survives every audit
Passage vocabulary · n=607 teachable, in ≥3 administrations freq-weighted is a tie
Explicitly tested targets · n=126 discounted: flips under family reweighting
data table + counters
| Channel | n | VocabLoco | Vocabulon | Audit status |
|---|
| Answer-choice words (teachable) | 496 | 17.3% | 22.2% | robust; family-deduped recount 125 vs 170 — strengthens |
| Passage words (af≥3, teachable) | 607 | 18.5% | 20.9% | direction holds w/ PSSA+Ohio restored (21.8 vs 26.0); freq-weighted tie |
| Tested targets | 126 | 12.7% | 15.1% | DISCOUNTED: equal-weight per family flips to 16.9 vs 12.8 (PARCC-bank driven) |
| NY item-map census (independent) | 69 | 6 | 8 | adversarial recount 5 vs 8 |
| Verbatim transcript targets | 104 | 23 | 19 | VocabLoco edge; 76 on neither |
| g5-page-only (recency) — all slices | — | 9.3–11.5% | 6.5–8.3% | VocabLoco wins recency everywhere |
The retention question this corpus can't answer: Vocabulon's cumulative edge rides partly on grade-3/4 words, while VocabLoco wins every freshest-words slice. If sixth-graders retain recent grade-5 words much better than earlier ones, the true gap narrows further. One partial offset: some of VocabLoco's g5 strength is flat re-teaching. accurate appears on its g3, g4, and g5 pages.
Self-audit · What we caught
What the review process caught
Discounted: the tested-target lead
145 of 150 mined grade-6 targets are attested in only ONE program family; the raw lead is PARCC-bank-driven and flips to VocabLoco (16.9% vs 12.8%) under equal-weight-per-family. STAAR grade 6 alone runs VocabLoco 4/26 vs Vocabulon 0/26. This channel is cited as directionally consistent, not as load-bearing evidence.
Corrected: the corpus was understated
A role-tag filter silently excluded PSSA and Ohio released-item text (two whole families, ~18 administrations) from the passage corpus; true structure is ~77 family-administrations / 17 families, not the published 59/15. Restoring them changes no channel's direction. One Ohio reader agent also failed on a content filter; Ohio still feeds every mechanical channel.
Fixed: the proposed list's "every tested word seated" claim failed audit
Four tested, uncovered words (biohazard, corpulent, roost, protrudes) were missing from the committee's 281. They are now on the shipped list of 285.
Flagged: reproducibility band
Some aggregate n's used in-flight classifications that were never persisted to disk. Independent reconstructions agree in direction but differ by 2–6 points, so every margin on this page carries a few points of play. No significance testing exists, and tested-slice margins are 2–3 words wide.
Exhibit B · The deliverable
The proposed Vocabulon grade-6 list: 285 words, built from the tests
Committee-built from 733 candidates, each with grade-6 test presence and absent from Vocabulon 3–5, then independently reviewed, revised, and audit-patched. The 41-of-50 figure in the verdict above comes from this list plus Vocabulon 3–5.
Download the list (CSV)
| Category | Words | Examples |
|---|
| Informational / academic | 91 | acquire, catastrophic, sustain, skeptical, convert |
| Question-stem metalanguage | 65 | inference, excerpt, emphasize, idiom, demonstrate |
| Literary / narrative | 59 | wary, torrent, humiliation, implored, gingerly |
| Science / social-studies domain | 28 | cryptography, igneous, simulations, forage, agility |
| Explicit tested targets | 31 | contradict, persistent, coax, brittle, surge (+4 audit-patched: biohazard, corpulent, roost, protrudes) |
| Morphology families | 11 | amphibious, encrypt, revived, insignificant, memorable |
view all 285 words
One asymmetry: this is a paper list judged against a shipped product, and VocabLoco could commission a grade-6 list of its own. What the list demonstrates is that Vocabulon's selection process tracks the tests. The reviewers recommended three purchase conditions: a versioned list artifact, an independent human re-audit of the seating claim, and delivery alongside context-clue and morphology instruction, since roughly 40% of grade-6 vocab points are list-proof.
Appendix · Method
How this was built
Corpus433 grade-6 content docs, family-deduplicated from the start and corrected to ~77 administrations / 17 families after audit. 150 tested targets mined; 5,319 corpus words classified (audit: 92% tier / 98% known-grade agreement).
Reading18 of 19 program readers transcribed 104 items verbatim with choices and answers (1 failed on a content filter); one full passage read per program with comprehension-critical word lists.
Independent censusNY item maps (standards-tagged L.6.4/RL.6.4/RI.6.4 items) joined to released booklets as an independent check on the mined targets: 8 vs 6 (recount 8 vs 5).
List constructionA 733-candidate pool was rated add/skip with categories. A committee built 281 words, a reviewer forced cuts and additions, and a post-hoc audit caught 4 missing tested words. Shipped at 285.
Adversarial layerA statistics reviewer (who found the tested-leg weighting flip and the corpus understatement), a skeptical-approver review (upheld at medium confidence, the weakest endorsement across the grades), and a completeness critic.
External validityThis corpus is state accountability tests. MAP Growth, ISEE, SSAT and other private-school instruments at grade 6 were out of scope, so confirm what Alpha administers before weighting this brief.