Early Reading Assessment:
A Practitioner’s Handbook

Dr. Natalie Rathvon, PhD What was the question that resulted in Early Reading Assessment? There were actually three related questions behind the writing of Early Reading Assessment: “What test(s) should we use to identify children who are at risk for reading problems?” “What test(s) should we use to monitor children’s progress in reading?” “What test(s) should we use to obtain information about the nature and extent of children’s reading problems for use in planning interventions?”

These were the questions I heard from teachers, administrators, assessment directors, psychologists, reading specialists, and educators implementing federal initiatives, such as No Child Left Behind, Reading First, and Early Reading First. These were also the questions I asked myself as a director of a series of early identification and intervention projects. All of us knew that our vulnerable young students could not afford to fall behind in reading. We needed to know what were the most reliable, valid, and usable measures for identifying which children were likely to become poor readers, monitoring their progress in reading, and – for those already having reading problems – diagnosing the nature and extent of the problem so they could receive the appropriate help in time.

Why is it so important to identify children at risk for reading failure as early as possible in their school careers?
Identifying students at risk for reading problems in the early primary grades is critical because more than 75% of students who are not identified until Grade 3 never catch up with their peers. (See pp. 1-2 for the consequences of intervening too late and pp. 16-17 for guidelines on when to administer screening measures).

How did you locate the tests for review?
As I began searching for tests that purported to assess prereading or reading skills in children in kindergarten through Grade 2, I discovered that the number of reading and reading-related measures for young children had exploded. The exponential increase in early reading measures has been spurred by the assessment mandates of No Child Left Behind, Reading First, and Early Reading First, as well as by concerns about the low levels of reading proficiency demonstrated by American students over the past decade on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In searching databases, journals, books, test catalogs, and reading-related web sites and contacting test authors and publishers directly, I initially identified approximately 70 instruments.

How did you decide which tests to include?
I selected the tests on the basis of four criteria. First, tests had to be designed to assess the reading or reading-related skills of children in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade. Second, tests had to assess abilities or skills that have been empirically identified to be predictive of or associated with reading acquisition or reading disabilities. Third, tests had to meet minimal standards of technical adequacy in terms of the five psychometric characteristics critical to early reading measures (see Chapter 2). Fourth, tests had to have adequate usability so that they had a chance of becoming part of practitioners’ repertoire of assessment instruments. I evaluated the usability of each measure in two ways: first, by reviewing information in the test manual(s) and the research literature, and second, by field-testing the measures with early primary grade students referred for reading problems. As a result of this process, which took several years, 42 tests ended up in the book.

Do tests that assess the same reading domain (decoding, comprehension, spelling, etc.) yield the same results for the same examinee?
No! This is one of the great myths of reading assessment! Test results can vary for the same examinee – sometimes markedly – from measure to measure. Sometimes the results are so discrepant that one test identifies a severe reading problem, whereas another does not (see pages 135, 165, and 175 for examples). This is why it is critical that practitioners understand the psychometric strengths and limitations of the measures they are using.

What’s in Early Reading Assessment?

• A discussion of the seven most critical issues in early reading assessment, including which skills should be measured and how linguistically diverse children should be screened
• A description of the component-based approach to reading assessment, including a description of the 10 key cognitive-linguistic abilities and early literacy skills that predict reading acquisition, measures assessing each skill, and issues in assessing each component
• An evidence-based framework for evaluating the technical adequacy of early reading measures
• A discussion of the five psychometric properties most critical to early reading measures
• Guidelines for evaluating the usability of early reading measures
• Special topic sections highlighting best practices in areas such as co-norming, discrepancy analysis, item response theory, and score types
• Reviews of 11 early reading assessment batteries – instruments designed to evaluate prereading, reading, and/or reading-related skills in early primary grade examinees and often intended for large-scale screening
• Reviews of 31 instruments that measure 1 or more of the 10 key reading components but that cover a broader age and grade range than the early reading assessment batteries
• A glossary of reading assessment and reading-related terms
• An annotated list of internet resources for early reading assessment, including assessment, reading research, and reading resources sites

What does each test review include?
In contrast to test reviews in traditional assessment texts, which typically provide only a few paragraphs or, at the most, a few pages about each test, each test review in Early Reading Assessment is designed to be as comprehensive as possible so that readers gain an in-depth understanding of the test and the results they will obtain with their own examinees. The reviews follow a standardized, easy-to-follow format, consisting of the following 13 sections:

• Overview, including changes from the previous edition in the case of revised tests
• Description of the subtests and composites
• Administration procedures, including any problems related to administration
• Scoring procedures, including types of scores yielded and any scoring issues or problems
• Interpretation procedures – what the scores mean and how to analyze and interpret them
• Technical adequacy, including standardization, reliability, test floors, item gradients, and validity
• Usability, including time and effort required, cost, adaptability for culturally and linguistically diverse examinees, and other considerations
• Links to intervention – how to use the results to design interventions to address the identified problems
• Relevant research – the scientific basis of the instrument
• Source and cost – where to obtain or purchase the test and the price, including supplementary materials
• A list of previous test reviews, if any
• A summary of the overall utility of the measure
• A case example for an early primary grade student and/or an entire early primary grade class, including a full score array and interpretive report to illustrate the type of information each measure provides and how to write up the results

Which of the 42 tests in the book is the best?
The bad news is that there is no one BEST reading test! The degree to which a test is valid and useful depends not only on its technical and usability characteristics, but also on the purpose of testing, the examinee’s age and grade, the nature of the reading problem, and a host of other factors. The good news is that if you are considering purchasing or using one of those 42 measures, you can consult the review in the book to determine if it is appropriate for your purposes, examinees, and setting.

What if one of the tests I’m considering isn’t reviewed in the book?
Some tests and measures were not included in the book because they did not meet even minimal standards for reliability and validity or because they were ineffective in identifying reading problems in children in the early primary grade range (kindergarten through Grade 2). Other instruments have appeared since the book was published in 2004. Moreover, given the explosion of commercially available tests and research instruments, there are likely to be some measures that did not come to my attention. If you are considering a test that is not reviewed in the book or that has been published since the book appeared, you can apply the framework presented in Chapter 2 to evaluate its technical adequacy and usability. In fact, one of the major goals of the book was to develop criteria that can be applied to any instrument purporting to assess reading or reading-related skills in early primary grade children.

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© 2008 Dr. Natalie Rathvon. All Rights Reserved.