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Many states now mandate early screening for dyslexia, but vary in how they address these mandates. There is confusion about the nature of screening versus diagnostic assessments, risk versus diagnosis, concurrent versus predictive validity, and inattention to indices of classification accuracy as the basis for determining risk. To help define what constitutes a screening assessment, we summarize efforts to develop short (3-5 min), teacher-administered screens that used multivariate strategies for variable selection, item response theory to select items that are most discriminating at a threshold for predicting risk, and statistical decision theory. These methods optimize prediction and lower the burden on teachers by reducing the number of items needed to evaluate risk. A specific goal of these efforts was to minimize decision errors that would result in the failure to identify a child as at risk of dyslexia/reading problems (false negatives) despite the inevitable increase in identifications of children who eventually perform in the typical range (false positives). Five screens, developed for different periods during kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2, predicted outcomes measured later in the same school year (Grade 2) or in the subsequent year (Grade 1). The results of this approach to development are applicable to other screening methods, especially those that attempt to predict those children at risk of dyslexia prior to the onset of reading instruction. Without reliable and valid early predictive screening measures that reduce the burden on teachers, early intervention and prevention of dyslexia and related reading problems will be difficult.

The authors' purpose was to examine adolescents' reading motivation in relation to standardized assessments of reading comprehension and fluency. After a reading pretest, 60 ninth-grade students (M age = 14.9 years) were randomly assigned to two groups. Compared to those in the control condition, those administered brief oral feedback intended to improve motivation indicated an increased focus on mastery goals and greater perceived control during a reading posttest. No differences were found with regard to four other aspects of motivation. Students in the treatment condition, including struggling readers more specifically, did not score better on the posttest measures of reading comprehension or fluency. Hence, results failed to replicate Zentall and Lee's (2012) findings with younger readers. Findings are discussed with regard to the theoretical and practical implications for understanding reading motivation.

Component skills and discourse frameworks of reading have identified characteristics of readers and texts that influence comprehension. However, these 2 frameworks have not previously been integrated in a comprehensive and systematic way to explain performance on any standardized assessment of reading comprehension that is in widespread use across a broad developmental spectrum. The current study undertook such an integration using the reading comprehension subtest of the Gates-McGinitie Reading Tests, investigating characteristics of the test's reading passages and comprehension questions and the component reading skills of students in middle and high school (n = 1,190) in order to determine the extent to which each of these dimensions affect test performance, both on average and through interaction with one another. The component skills of reading included word reading, reading fluency, vocabulary, background knowledge, and working memory. Test questions were coded for their processing demands, specifically the need to recall information from test and to form text-based inferences, while text passages were measured on word frequency, sentence length, text cohesion, and genre. We found that better vocabulary and background knowledge were the most important reader characteristics in accounting for reading comprehension. The processing demands of test questions were not highly predictive of item difficulty. Rather, genre was the most important passage feature in explaining item difficulty. Reader-test interactions were present, but were not pronounced. We discuss the importance of these findings as they relate to the measurement of comprehension and the integration of component skills and text-discourse models of reading.

The integration of knowledge during reading was tested in 1,109 secondary school students. Reading times for the second sentence in a pair (Jane's headache went away) were compared in conditions where the first sentence was either causally or temporally related to the first sentence (Jane took an aspirin vs. Jane looked for an aspirin). Mixed-effects explanatory item response models revealed that at higher comprehension levels, sentences were read more quickly in the causal condition. There were no condition-related reading time differences at lower comprehension levels. This interaction held with comprehension- and inference-related factors (working memory, word and world knowledge, and word reading efficiency) in the models. Less skilled comprehenders have difficulty in knowledge-text integration processes that facilitate sentence processing during reading.

This comparative study examines relationships between phonemic awareness and Spanish reading skill acquisition among three groups of Spanish-speaking first and second graders: children in Mexico receiving reading instruction in Spanish and children in the United States receiving reading instruction in either Spanish or English. Children were tested on Spanish oral language and reading skills in fall and spring of Grades 1 and 2. Children in Mexico were the lowest in phonemic awareness among the three groups and very low in their entering first-grade reading skills. However, they ended second grade matching or surpassing the reading skills of the U.S. students while remaining lower in phonemic awareness. Findings cast doubt on whether phonemic awareness instruction is helpful for children learning to read in Spanish.

Home language experiences are important for children's development of language and literacy. However, the home language context is complex, especially for Spanish-speaking children in the United States. A child's use of Spanish or English likely ranges along a continuum, influenced by preferences of particular people involved, such as parents, siblings, or friends. Moreover, there are likely differences across social contexts represented by the classroom--teachers, educational programs, and economic situations--which could be important to understand. The current article tests confirmatory empirical models for Spanish versus English language use in the homes of 1,115 Spanish-speaking children and how this use relates to home learning activities and kindergarten children's language and literacy skills. The results show that although overall balance of family language use relates to home language and literacy activities as well as children's kindergarten language and literacy skills, language use by individual family members is also related to some home learning activities and children's skills.

The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an intervention--Quality English and Science Teaching 2--designed to help English language learners (ELLs) and their English proficient classmates develop academic language in science, as required by the Common Core State Standards. The intervention consisted of supplementary instructional materials and professional development. Participants included 1,309 students, of whom 353 were ELLs. Sixty sections taught by 15 teachers in seven middle schools were randomized within teacher to the intervention or the control condition. Treatment effects were tested separately for academic language and science knowledge. For the whole group, results indicated posttest differences favoring the treatment group sections were statistically significant for academic language and science. For ELLs however, posttest differences favored the treatment group for academic language only. Follow-up analyses investigating implementation found that treatment fidelity was related to gains in both academic language and science knowledge for the group as a whole and for ELLs. Effect sizes suggest the intervention was promising in promoting the academic language in science of both ELLs and their English proficient classmates.

Little is known about how specific components of working memory, namely, attentional processes including response inhibition, sustained attention, and cognitive inhibition, are related to reading decoding and comprehension. The current study evaluated the relations of reading comprehension, decoding, working memory, and attentional control in 1,134 adolescent students. Path analyses were used to assess the direct and indirect effects of working memory and aspects of attentional control on reading comprehension and decoding. There were significant direct effects of working memory, sustained attention, and cognitive inhibition on reading comprehension, but not decoding. There was a significant direct effect of working memory and response inhibition on decoding, but not comprehension. These results suggest that different aspects of attentional control are important for decoding versus comprehension.

We evaluated the reliability and validity of two oral reading fluency scores for 1-minute equated passages: median score and mean score. These scores were calculated from measures of reading fluency administered up to five times over the school year to students in grades six to eight (n = 1,317). Both scores were highly reliable with strong convergent validity for adequately developing and struggling middle grade readers. These results support the use of either the median or mean score for oral reading fluency assessments for middle grade readers. (Contains 11 tables.)

We examined student-, classroom-, and school-level effects in predicting second-grade Spanish-speaking children's oral reading fluency in Spanish. Teachers in 67 randomly selected urban schools administered the Tejas LEE to 1,537 first- and second-grade students. Oral reading fluency was measured in the passages students read for comprehension. Covariates were mean fluency in Grade 1, variability in fluency in Grade 1, degree of grouping in the school, and the proportion of second-grade students in the classroom and/or the school taking the Tejas LEE. Treatment effects were administration format (paper, desktop, handheld) and type of teacher support (no mentoring, web mentoring, and on-site plus web mentoring). Second-grade teachers positively affected students' reading fluency when (a) they administered the Tejas LEE on paper with the associated paper reports in classrooms of bilingual students, and (b) they either received web mentoring and had relatively homogeneous classrooms or received on-site or no mentoring and had ability-grouped classes. Implications for interpreting assessment results are discussed in the context of the type of support provided to teachers and the grouping of bilingual students by language and/or by ability. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

The cognitive attributes of Grade 1 students who responded adequately and inadequately to a Tier 2 reading intervention were evaluated. The groups included inadequate responders based on decoding and fluency criteria (n = 29), only fluency criteria (n = 75), adequate responders (n = 85), and typically achieving students (n = 69). The cognitive measures included assessments of phonological awareness, rapid letter naming, oral language skills, processing speed, vocabulary, and nonverbal problem solving. Comparisons of all four groups identified phonological awareness as the most significant contributor to group differentiation. Measures of rapid letter naming, syntactic comprehension/working memory, and vocabulary also contributed uniquely to some comparisons of adequate and inadequate responders. In a series of regression analyses designed to evaluate the contributions of responder status to cognitive skills independently of variability in reading skills, only the model for rapid letter naming achieved statistical significance, accounting for a small (1%) increment in explained variance beyond that explained by models based only on reading levels. Altogether, these results do not suggest qualitative differences among the groups, but are consistent with a continuum of severity associated with the level of reading skills across the four groups. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)

This study of 1,338 Spanish-speaking 1st graders examined contextual effects of bilingual programs on reading comprehension and the effect of language of instruction within these contexts. The study included 128 classrooms in 32 schools located in border Texas and in urban Texas and California. These classrooms used either English immersion or Spanish maintenance bilingual programs. Detailed observations of teachers' instructional language were made, sampled within the year. The analyses allowed classroom-level differences to be separated from student-level differences, and for Spanish and English passage comprehension to be considered simultaneously. While mean differences between programs were reduced for English passage comprehension, maintenance programs still outperformed immersion programs in Spanish. Results also indicated large program and locale covariance differences at the classroom level, implying important differences in how these programs operate in these locales. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures, and 1 footnote.)

This study investigated the efficacy of a package of accommodations for poor readers in Grade 7. Students with and without word reading disabilities were randomly assigned to take an experimental version of a high-stakes reading comprehension test in 1 of 3 formats: (a) standard administration, (b) read aloud accommodations with 1-day administration, or (c) read aloud accommodations with 2-day administration. The significant condition effect and nonsignificant group by condition interaction suggested that accommodations helped both poor and average readers. However, the accommodation effect in average readers stemmed from low performance in the nonaccommodated experimental condition that was not apparent when the same students previously took the state-administered test. The 2-day administration was more effective than the 1-day administration. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Theories concerning the development of phonological awareness place special emphasis on lexical and orthographic knowledge. Given the large degree of variability in preschool classrooms that house Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELL), this study controlled for classroom effects by removing classroom means and covariances based on 158 children from 40 classrooms. Path analyses of the child-level covariance matrices tested the extent to which vocabulary and letter knowledge in each language predicted growth in English and Spanish phonological awareness of 130 preschool-age, Spanish-speaking ELLs. Results supported cross-linguistic effects of prior phonological awareness and Spanish vocabulary in the development of bilingual phonological awareness. Implications for theory, instruction, and research methods are discussed. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

The goal of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an intervention--Quality English and Science Teaching (QuEST)--designed to develop the science knowledge and academic language of middle grades English language learners studying science in their second language and their English-proficient classmates. Ten sixth-grade science teachers in 5 middle schools in a large south Texas district participated in the study. For each teacher, 2 sections were randomly assigned to the intervention, Project QuEST, and 2 sections were randomly assigned to the district curriculum. The sample of students included English language learners, former English language learners, and fluent English-speaking students. Treatment effects were tested separately for science knowledge and vocabulary using a 3-level multilevel analysis of covariance (students nested within section, sections nested within teacher, and teacher) with the analogous pretest serving as the covariate. Analyses included fixed effects of treatment assignment and the covariate. Treatment effects were tested at the level of the section. Results indicated that posttest differences favoring the treatment group sections were statistically significant for both science knowledge and vocabulary. (Contains 5 tables, 1 figure and 7 footnotes.)

Two experimental studies to improve vocabulary knowledge and comprehension were conducted in 7th-grade social studies classes with English language learners (ELLs). Two different nonoverlapping samples of classes of 7th-grade students (N = 381 and N = 507) were randomly assigned at the classroom (i.e., section) level to a social studies intervention or to business as usual comparison groups. The number of sections assigned to treatment was 7 and 9 in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Eight sections were assigned to comparison in each experiment. In addition, students were randomly assigned to sections prior to assignment of sections to treatment and control. Treatment students received a multicomponent social studies instruction including explicit vocabulary instruction, use of structured pairing, strategic use of video to build concepts and promote discussion, and use of graphic organizers for approximately 12 weeks daily during social studies class. Findings indicated significant differences in favor of the treatment students on curriculum-based vocabulary and comprehension measures for both experimental studies for all students including students who were ELLs. (Contains 5 tables.)

This study utilized early reading assessment data from a randomized trial of 210 urban and rural schools in Texas to examine contextual effects on risk prediction in first and second grade. The primary objective was to examine the roles of (a) individual differences, (b) the grade 1 classroom, and (c) the pairing of first and second grade teachers in determining grade 2 outcomes in word reading and fluency. A second objective was to investigate whether the administration format of the assessment (paper, paper plus desktop, handheld plus desktop) or the level of teacher support (web mentoring, no mentoring) moderated the prediction. These moderator variables proved not to be significant. Subsequent analyses found that a combination of student pretest and mean of pretest classroom was a better predictor than student pretest alone. Additionally, the effect of student scores varied by teacher-pair. On average, intraclass correlations (ICCs) ranged from 6% to 17%. Differences in ICCs at the classroom level were much greater than at the school level, and differences in urban schools were twice that of rural schools.

Serious conceptual and procedural problems associated with current diagnostic methods call for alternative approaches to assessing and diagnosing students with reading problems. This study presents a new analytic model to improve the classification and prediction of children's reading development. Growth mixture modeling was used to identify the presence of 10 different heterogeneous developmental patterns. In all, 411 children in kindergarten through Grade 2 from 3 elementary schools in Texas were administered measures of phonological awareness, word recognition, and rapid naming skills 4 times a year. The mean ages were 5.8 years (SD = 0.35) for the kindergartners, 6.9 years (SD = 0.39) for Grade 1, and 8.0 years (SD = 0.43) for Grade 2; the percentage of boys was 50%. The results indicate that precursor reading skills such as phonological awareness and rapid naming are highly predictive of word reading (word recognition) and that developmental profiles formed in kindergarten are directly associated with development in Grades 1 and 2. Students identified as having reading-related difficulties in kindergarten exhibited slower development of word recognition skills in subsequent years of the study.

The construct validity of English and Spanish phonological awareness (PA) tasks was examined with a sample of 812 kindergarten children from 71 transitional bilingual education program classrooms located in 3 different types of geographic regions in California and Texas. Tasks of PA, including blending nonwords, segmenting words, and phoneme elision, were measured in Spanish and in English and analyzed via multilevel confirmatory factor analysis at the task level. Results showed that the PA tasks defined a unitary construct at both the student and classroom levels in each language. English and Spanish PA factors were related to each other (.93 and .83 at the student and classroom levels, respectively) as well as to word reading, both within languages (correlations estimated between .74 and .93) and across languages (correlations estimated between .47 and .79). Although the PA constructs were statistically separable in each language, the high correlation between Spanish and English PA indicates considerable overlap in these abilities.

The interaction hypothesis proposes that valid test accommodations benefit only those with disabilities. To evaluate this hypothesis, Grade 3 students with word decoding difficulties identified with dyslexia and average decoders were randomly assigned to take the same version of the Texas reading accountability assessment under accommodated and standard administrations. The accommodated administration was given in 2 sessions with oral reading of proper nouns and comprehension stems. Only students with decoding problems benefited from the accommodations, showing a significant increase in average performance and a 7-fold increase in the odds of passing the test. These results supported the interaction hypothesis, showing that accommodations designed for a clearly defined academic disability can enhance performance on a high-stakes assessment. (Contains 2 tables.)

This study leverages advances in multivariate cross-classified random effects models to extend the Simple View of Reading to account for variation within readers and across texts, allowing for both the personalization of the reading function and the integration of the component skills and text and discourse frameworks for reading research. We illustrate the Complete View of Reading (CVRi) using data from an intensive longitudinal design study with a large sample of typical (N = 648) and struggling readers (N = 865) in middle school and using oral reading fluency as a proxy for comprehension. To illustrate the utility of the CVRi, we present a model with cross-classified random intercepts for students and passages and random slopes for growth, Lexile difficulty, and expository text type at the student level. We highlight differences between typical and struggling readers and differences across students in different grades. The model illustrates that readers develop differently and approach the reading task differently, showing differential impact of text features on their fluency. To be complete, a model of reading must be able to reflect this heterogeneity at the person and passage level, and the CVRi is a step in that direction. Implications for reading interventions and 21st century reading research in the era of "Big Data" and interest in phenotypic characterization are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilized early reading assessment data from a randomized trial of 210 urban and rural schools in Texas to examine contextual effects on risk prediction in first and second grade. The primary objective was to examine the roles of (a) individual differences, (b) the grade 1 classroom, and (c) the pairing of first and second grade teachers in determining grade 2 outcomes in word reading and fluency. A second objective was to investigate whether the administration format of the assessment (paper, paper plus desktop, handheld plus desktop) or the level of teacher support (web mentoring, no mentoring) moderated the prediction. These moderator variables proved not to be significant. Subsequent analyses found that a combination of student pretest and mean of pretest classroom was a better predictor than student pretest alone. Additionally, the effect of student scores varied by teacher-pair. On average, intraclass correlations (ICCs) ranged from 6% to 17%. Differences in ICCs at the classroom level were much greater than at the school level, and differences in urban schools were twice that of rural schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construct validity of English and Spanish phonological awareness (PA) tasks was examined with a sample of 812 kindergarten children from 71 transitional bilingual education program classrooms located in 3 different types of geographic regions in California and Texas. Tasks of PA, including blending nonwords, segmenting words, and phoneme elision, were measured in Spanish and in English and analyzed via multilevel confirmatory factor analysis at the task level. Results showed that the PA tasks defined a unitary construct at both the student and classroom levels in each language. English and Spanish PA factors were related to each other (.93 and .83 at the student and classroom levels, respectively) as well as to word reading, both within languages (correlations estimated between .74 and .93) and across languages (correlations estimated between .47 and .79). Although the PA constructs were statistically separable in each language, the high correlation between Spanish and English PA indicates considerable overlap in these abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]