Members of the Reading First Assessment Committee
(Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement, 2002)
Screening
Screening assessments help determine which children are at risk for reading difficulty and will need additional intervention. The goal of screening assessment is to predict those children who are likely to experience reading difficulties. Screening assessment should be a brief assessment that targets those beginning reading skills that are strongly predictive of future reading success. Screening should be conducted at the beginning of the school year with all children in grades K-3 to identify those who need further intervention in reading.
Screening assessment is used to classify children into a “risk status” category. The two risk status categories are at-risk and not at-risk. Screening measures include cut-off scores to determine risk status. Risk status is determined by evaluating where the screening test score falls using the cut-off scores provided in the test manual. Screening is only valuable when additional intervention is provided to help children meet or exceed grade level reading outcomes.
Diagnosis
Diagnostic assessments help teachers plan instruction by providing in-depth information about students’ instructional needs. Diagnostic assessments help to pinpoint specific areas of reading that are “at grade level” and those for which additional intervention is needed. For example, a child may have difficulties with letter-sound correspondences and respond best in a one-to-one format as opposed to small group instruction. A one-to-one tutoring program that focuses on teaching letter-sound correspondences in an explicit and systematic manner may be appropriate. Diagnostic assessment may help in forming preliminary instructional groups, if small group delivery is warranted.
Progress Monitoring
Progress monitoring assessments help determine whether students are making adequate progress or need more intervention to achieve grade level reading outcomes. Because children respond differently during instructional sessions, even when research-validated programs are used, it is important that assessment be ongoing. This means that assessment occurs during and after instruction. This type of assessment is more sensitive to individual progress, as compared to assessing outcomes (discussed next). Progress monitoring assessments allow teachers to modify instruction to keep students successful.
Outcome
Outcome assessments provide a “bottom-line” evaluation of the effectiveness of a reading program. These reading assessments are usually standardized. There are two general purposes of outcome assessment. One purpose is to judge the quality of the reading program. In this case, outcome assessments are typically given before and after reading instruction. A drawback of outcome assessment is that these assessments are less sensitive to changes in performance during intervention, given the length of time between pre and post-administrations of the assessment. A second purpose of outcome assessment is to determine whether students meet or exceed grade level expectations. Students can be classified into those who fail to meet, those who meet, and those who exceed these grade level expectations.