Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading, Aligned to the Language Arts Florida Standards, FAIR-FS, Grades 3 through 12. Technical Manual

The FAIR-FS consists of computer-adaptive reading comprehension and oral language screening tasks that provide measures to track growth over time, as well as a Probability of Literacy Success (PLS) linked to grade-level performance (i.e., the 40th percentile) on the reading comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-10) in the 2014-2015 school year and will predict to the Florida Standards Assessment once those data are available. Thus, the FAIR-FS provides universal screening and diagnostic tasks in a precise and efficient computer-adaptive framework with psychometrics and norms derived from large samples of Florida K-12 students representative of Florida demographics. By including Vocabulary Knowledge and Syntax Knowledge Tasks, the FAIR-FS has excellent construct coverage of oral language, which has been shown to account for the vast majority (i.e., 72%-96%, with a median of 87%) of individual differences in reading comprehension in grades 4-10 (Foorman, Koon, Petscher, Mitchell, & Truckenmiller, 2015) and comparable variance to decoding fluency in grades 1-2 (Foorman, Herrera, Petscher, Mitchell, & Truckenmiller, 2015). In grades 3 through 12, the FAIR-FS consists of four computer-adaptive tasks that each provide unique information regarding a student's literacy skills. The FAIR-FS efficiently assesses multiple research-based component skills of reading comprehension to help teachers diagnose skill weaknesses and target instruction. This technical manual provides: (1) An introduction to the alphabetic principle; (2) Comprehending Written Language (better known as Reading Comprehension); (3) Summary of FAIR-FS Constructs and Tasks; and (4) Description of the Tasks in the FAIR-FS. Description of Method, Item Response Theory, Guidelines for Retaining Items, Linking Design and Item Response Analytic Framework, Norming Studies and Score Definitions are also provided. Information on Reliability and Validity is also provided in this manual. Appended are: (1) G3-G12 Weights; (2) Distribution of the Log Odds and Predicted Probability of Success on the SAT-10 at the 40th Percentile; (3) Distribution of the Log Odds and Predicted Probability of Success on the SAT-10 at the 70th Percentile; (4) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Vocabulary Knowledge and PPVT-IV; (5) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Word Recognition and TOWRE Real Word; (6) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Word Recognition and TOWRE Non-Word; and (7) Quantile Correlations between FAIR-FS Syntax Knowledge and GJT.