Topic: Screening
Definition
Short processes to find students who need help in reading, writing, spelling, or math.
This tool offers a user-friendly experience to make informed choices related to academic screeners based upon personalized search criteria.
Response to Intervention (RTI) has been promoted as a valid method for identifying learning disabilities, but questions remain about how it should be used. This study examined how individual student differences predicted response to a reading comprehension intervention using different measures as well as different definitions of “response.”
There is broad agreement that schools should implement early screening and intervention programs. State legislation generally favors the use of universal screening within schools across grades K-2.
This study explores factors that might predict the way dyslexia is identified by schools. The authors looked at data on 7,947 second-grade students in 126 schools from one U.S. state. The findings suggest systematic demographic differences in whether a student is identified with dyslexia by schools, even when using universal screening.
This infographic highlights common definitions of dyslexia, and identifies core dimensions of dyslexia shared across those definitions.
Screening assessments can help capture each child’s reading and language strengths and weaknesses in key early stages of development.
There are many available screeners for reading and other education or social-emotional outcomes. This brief outlines important things to consider when choosing and using a screener.
Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) tools are brief assessments that have several uses in school settings.
This infographic compares different approaches to screening fourth and fifth grade students to determine which most accurately identified risk of reading difficulties.
Dynamic assessment is a testing approach that focuses on how well a student can learn something new as opposed to what a student currently knows. It combines features of single timepoint or “static” assessment and multiple timepoint assessment to predict reading problems, as seen in the diagram below.
This study examined whether Dynamic Assessment, an approach to testing where students are instructed on tested material as part of the test, can improve the identification of mathematics difficulties in 392 first-grade English learners, with varying levels of language dominance. Students spoke mostly English with some Spanish, Spanish and English equally, mostly Spanish with some English, or exclusively Spanish. Students were randomly assigned to either a Spanish or English Dynamic Assessment condition.
Screening for dyslexia risk should be part of a decision-making framework that answers four fundamental questions.
The Literacy For All Series
This Keynote session with Sarah Sayko will describe the resources NCIL can provide to schools and parents and the evidence base that supports screening, instruction, and intervention to increase literacy achievement for students who struggle to read and students with dyslexia.
This paper aims to provide an overview and some insight into what is known about screening for dyslexia.
The Literacy For All Series
This session wil discuss the characteristics of strong reading screening assessments and investigate the pre-literacy and early literacy areas (or behaviors) that are predictive of future reading success.
This infographic explores The Reading House (TRH), a children’s book designed to assess emergent skills in 3-4 year-old children during pediatric wellness visits.
The Critical Role of Instructional Response for Identifying Dyslexia and Other Learning Disabilities
This article proposes a “hybrid” model for dyslexia identification that documents low reading achievement, inadequate response to instruction, and exclusionary factors. It works best in multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS).
This study examined fourth-grade struggling readers and found that word reading performance recorded at pretest predicted these readers’ responses to intervention when it was administered. Students with the most substantial word reading problems may require more intensive and individualized treatments.
This toolkit helps educators and parents learn about how screening can help determine which students may be at risk for reading difficulties.
When evaluating the quality of any screening tool, it is important to determine whether or not the assessment is biased against different groups of students. We want to ensure that students do not receive higher or lower scores on an assessment for reasons other than the primary skill or trait that is being tested.
Classification accuracy is a key characteristic of screening tools. A goal in classification accuracy is to correctly identify issues that result in a later problem and situations in which the scores identify issues that do not result in a later problem.
Assessment is a process of collecting information. Screening is an assessment process that helps teachers identify students who are at risk for not meeting grade-level learning goals.
Reliability is the consistency of a set of scores that are designed to measure the same thing. Reliability is a statistical property of scores that must be demonstrated rather than assumed.
Sample representativeness is an important piece to consider when evaluating the quality of a screening assessment. If you are trying to determine whether or not the screening tool accurately measures children’s skills, you want to ensure that the sample that is used to validate the tool is representative of your population of interest.
Validity is broadly defined as how well something measures what it’s supposed to measure. The reliability and validity of scores from assessments are two concepts that are closely knit together and feed into each other.
Screening Resources
This article offers a 5-step framework for identifying reading difficulties and determining if a student is eligible for special education services under IDEA, including the role of RTI, cognitive processing tests, and other statewide assessments and curriculum-based measures.
Topic: Dyslexia, Screening, Identification
Dr. Compton outlines the components of a schoolwide screening system and gives an example of how a school might implement a universal screening program.
Topic: General Literacy, Assessments, Screening
This report describes the findings of a task force charged with studying the implementation of a dyslexia pilot program in Maryland.
Topic: Dyslexia, Interventions, Screening
The research reported here is funded by awards to the National Center on Improving Literacy from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, in partnership with the Office of Special Education Programs (Award #: S283D160003). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of OESE, OSEP, or the U.S. Department of Education. Copyright © 2024 National Center on Improving Literacy. https://www.improvingliteracy.org
