CATCH THEM BEFORE THEY FALL - Identification and Assessment To Prevent Reading Failure in Young Children
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CATCH THEM
BEFORE THEY FALL
Identification and Assessment
To Prevent Reading Failure in Young Children
BY JOSEPH K.TORGESEN
O NE OF the most compelling findings from recent
reading research is that children who get off to a
poor start in reading rarely catch up.As several studies
skills at roughly normal levels throughout the early el-
ementary school period. Although adequate develop-
ment of these skills in first grade does not guarantee
have now documented, the poor first-grade reader al- that children will continue to maintain normal growth
most invariably continues to be a poor reader (Francis, in second grade without extra help, to the extent that
Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996; Torge- we allow children to fall seriously behind at any point
sen & Burgess, 1998). And the consequences of a slow during early elementary school, we are moving to a “re-
start in reading become monumental as they accumu- medial” rather than a “preventive” model of interven-
late exponentially over time. As Stanovich (1986) tion. Once children fall behind in the growth of critical
pointed out in his well-known paper on the “Matthew word reading skills, it may require very intensive inter-
effects” (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer) ventions to bring them back up to adequate levels of
associated with failure to acquire early word reading reading accuracy (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 1994;
skills, these consequences range from negative atti- Vaughn & Schumm, 1996), and reading fluency may be
tudes toward reading (Oka & Paris, 1986), to reduced even more difficult to restore because of the large
opportunities for vocabulary growth (Nagy, Herman, & amounts of reading practice that is lost by children
Anderson, 1985), to missed opportunities for develop- each month and year that they remain poor readers
ment of reading comprehension strategies (Brown, (Rashotte,Torgesen, & Wagner, 1997).
Palinscar, & Purcell, 1986), to less actual practice in The purpose of this article is to provide practical ad-
reading than other children receive (Arlington, 1984). vice about methods to prevent reading failure that is
The best solution to the problem of reading failure grounded in the new knowledge about reading we
is to allocate resources for early identification and have acquired over the past two decades. My primary
prevention. It is a tragedy of the first order that while focus will be on early identification of children at risk
we know clearly the costs of waiting too long, few for problems in learning to read as well as methods for
school districts have in place a mechanism to identify monitoring the growth of critical early reading skills.
and help children before failure takes hold. Indeed, in The goal is to describe procedures that will allow edu-
the majority of cases, there is no systematic identifica- cators to identify children who need extra help in
tion until third grade, by which time successful remedi- reading before they experience serious failure and to
ation is more difficult and more costly. monitor the early development of reading skill to iden-
School-based preventive efforts should be engi- tify children who may require extra help as reading
neered to maintain growth in critical word reading instruction proceeds through elementary school.
The advice provided in this article is based on the
Joseph K. Torgesen is currently a Distinguished Re- research my colleagues Richard Wagner, Carol
search Professor of psychology and education at Rashotte, and I have been conducting on both predic-
Florida State University. For the last ten years, he has tion and prevention of reading disabilities (Torgesen,
been part of the research effort sponsored by the Na- Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994; 1997; Wagner, et al., 1994;
tional Institutes of Health to identify the nature, 1997) as well as the work of many other researchers
causes, and best approaches to instruction for chil- that was reviewed in an earlier issue of this magazine
dren with moderate to severe reading problems. The (Summer, 1995). It is guided by several important as-
research conducted at Florida State University that sumptions and facts about reading, reading growth,
is cited in this article was supported by grants num- and reading failure that will be discussed first. Follow-
bered HD23340 and HD30988 from the National In- ing this description of assumptions and a brief outline
stitute of Child Health and Human Development, of some critical dimensions of preventive instruction, I
and by grants from the National Center for Learning will describe a number of specific measures and pro-
Disabilities and the Donald D. Hammill Foundation. cedures that should prove useful as educators seek
1 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS SPRING/SUMMER 1998ways to focus more intensive in- culty is expressed most di-
struction on children whose needs rectly on two kinds of reading
are greatest. tasks. First, children destined to be
poor readers at the end of elementar y
school almost invariably have difficulties under-
Assumptions about reading, standing and applying the alphabetic principle in deci-
reading growth, and reading failure phering unfamiliar words.These children have unusual
Most of the points that will be discussed in this sec- difficulties learning to use the regular patterns of cor-
tion are not, in fact, mere assumptions about reading, respondence between letters and sounds in words as
but, rather, are well-established facts. However, I use an aid in identifying new words they encounter in text
the word assumption here to convey the sense either (Siegel, 1989). They have trouble “sounding out” un-
that the ideas are self-evident or that they are now as- known words. Second, poor readers at all grade levels
sumed to be true based on consistent research find- are characterized by slower than normal development
ings.The first of these “assumptions” is, in fact, a self-ev- of a “sight vocabulary” of words they can read fluently
ident value judgment. and automatically. Ultimately, it is this difficulty in rapid
Adequate reading comprehension is the most im- word recognition that limits comprehension in older
portant ultimate outcome of effective instruction in poor readers, for these skills allow children to focus on
reading. The ultimate purpose of reading instruction is constructing the meaning of what they are reading
to help children acquire the skills that enable learning rather than spending too many of their intellectual re-
from, understanding, and enjoyment of written lan- sources on trying to identify the words (Adams, 1990).
guage.This “assumption” is not controversial. No matter The strongest current theories of reading growth link
what one’s personal preferences for instructional phonetic and “sight word” reading skills together by
method, the end goal is to help children comprehend showing how good phonetic reading skills are neces-
written material at a level that is consistent with their sary in the formation of accurate memory for the
general intellectual abilities. spelling patterns that are the basis of sight word recog-
Two general types of skill and knowledge are re- nition (Ehri, in press; Share & Stanovich, 1995).
quired for good reading comprehension. Consistent The most common cause of difficulties acquiring
with Gough’s “simple view of reading” (1996), compre- early word reading skills is weakness in the ability to
hension of written material requires: 1) general lan- process the phonological features of language (Liber-
guage comprehension ability; and 2) ability to accu- man, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989). This is perhaps
rately and fluently identify the words in print. Knowl- the most important discovery about reading difficulties
edge and active application of specific reading strate- in the last twenty years. Weaknesses in the phonologi-
gies is also required to maximize reading comprehen- cal area of language development can be measured by a
sion (Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1997) but most of the variety of nonreading tasks, but the ones most com-
variability among children and adults in comprehen- monly used assess phonemic awareness, which can be
sion of written material can be accounted for by mea- defined simply as the ability to identify, think about, or
suring the two broad families of skills identified in manipulate the individual sounds in words. Much of
Gough’s simple view (Hoover & Gough, 1990).That is, our new confidence in being able to identify children
good general language comprehension and good word at risk for reading failure before reading instruction be-
reading skills are the most critical skills required for ef- gins depends on the use of tests of phonemic aware-
fective comprehension of written material. ness, since this ability has been shown to be causally re-
Most children who become poor readers experi- lated to the growth of early word reading skills (Lund-
ence early and continuing difficulties in learning berg, Frost, & Peterson, 1988;Wagner, et al., 1997).
how to accurately identify printed words. This diffi- Discovery of the core phonological problems associ-
SPRING/SUMMER 1998 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 2ated with specific reading disability has had at least require instruction on include: phonemic awareness,
one unanticipated consequence. The ability to assess letter-sound correspondences, blending skills, a small
these core language problems directly has led to the number of pronunciation conventions (i.e., silent e
discovery that the early word reading difficulties of rule), use of context to help specify a word once it is
children with relatively low general intelligence and partially or completely phonemically decoded, strate-
verbal ability are associated with the same factors gies for multi-syllable words, and automatic recogni-
(weaknesses in phonological processing) that interfere tion of high-frequency “irregular” words. It goes almost
with early reading growth in children who have gen- without saying that this type of instruction should be
eral intelligence in the normal range (Fletcher, et al., embedded within as many opportunities for meaning-
1994; Share & Stanovich, 1995; Stanovich & Siegel, ful reading and writing as possible.
1994). So, weaknesses in phonemic awareness charac- The lesson from recent large-scale prevention stud-
terize children with reading problems across a broad ies (Brown & Felton, 1990; Foorman, et al., 1998;Torge-
span of general verbal ability. On the one hand, many sen, et al., 1998;Vellutino, et al., 1997) is that it is possi-
children enter school with adequate general verbal ble to maintain critical word reading skills of most chil-
ability and cognitive weaknesses limited to the phono- dren at risk for reading failure at roughly average levels
logical/language domain. Their primary problem in if this type of instruction is provided beginning some-
learning to read involves learning to translate between time during kindergarten or first grade. However, it is
printed and oral language. On the other hand, another also true that in all studies conducted to date, substan-
significant group of poor readers, composed largely of tial proportions of children with the most severe
children from families of lower socio-economic or mi- weaknesses remain significantly impaired in these criti-
nority status, enter school significantly delayed in a cal skills following intervention. For example, if we
much broader range of prereading skills (Whitehurst & adopt the 30th percentile as a standard for adequate
Lonigan, in press). Since these children are delayed not reading progress, then the proportion of the total pop-
only in phonological but also in general oral language ulation remaining at risk in spite of the best interven-
skills, they are deficient in both of the critical kinds of tions tested to date ranges from 5 percent to 7 percent
knowledge and skill required for good reading compre- (Torgesen, 1998).Although these results are clearly bet-
hension. Even if these children can acquire adequate ter than the 30 percent to 60 percent of children who
word reading skill, their ability to comprehend the frequently fall below these standards without special
meaning of what they read may be limited by their interventions, they nevertheless suggest that there is a
weak general verbal abilities. core of disabled readers in the population for whom
Children with general oral language weaknesses re- we have not yet solved the reading puzzle.
quire extra instruction in a broader range of knowl- It is almost certain that some additional answers to
edge and skills than those who come to school im- this question will come as we direct our attention to
paired only in phonological ability. What is well estab- the quality and intensity, as well as the content, of our
lished at this point, though, is that both kinds of chil- instruction. For example, Juel (1996) has shown the
dren will require special support in the growth of importance of a particular kind of “scaffolded” interac-
early word reading skills if they are to make adequate tion between teacher and child in increasing under-
progress in learning to read. standing and application of phonemic reading skills,
and these types of interactions are also prescribed in
the teacher manuals of at least two widely used in-
Elements of an effective preventive structional programs designed for children with read-
program in reading ing disabilities (Lindamood & Lindamood, 1984; Wil-
The most critical elements of an effective program son, 1988). We turn now to a brief consideration of is-
for the prevention of reading disability at the elemen- sues surrounding intensity of instruction.
tary school level are: (a) the right kind and quality of The right level of intensity. Greater intensity and du-
instruction delivered with the (b) right level of inten- ration of instruction is required because the increased
sity and duration to (c) the right children at the (d) explicitness of instruction for children who are at risk
right time. I will briefly consider each of these ele- for reading failure requires that more things be taught
ments in turn. directly by the teacher. Intensity of instruction is in-
The right kind and quality of instruction. It is be- creased primarily by reducing teacher/student ratios.
yond the scope of this article to discuss instructional Unless beginning reading instruction for children with
methods for children with phonological processing phonological weaknesses is more intensive (or lasts
weaknesses in any depth at all. In broad stroke, they significantly longer) than normal instruction, these
will benefit from the same approach to reading in- children will necessarily lag significantly behind their
struction as children with normal abilities in this peers in reading growth. An effective preventive pro-
area—structured, systematic, and explicit—but for this gram may involve several levels of instructional inten-
at-risk group, such instruction is not just beneficial, it is sity ranging from small-group to one-on-one instruc-
critical. As experienced teachers understand (Gaskins, tion, depending upon the severity of the risk factors
et al., 1996), we cannot assume that these children will for each child.
acquire any necessary skill for reading words unless The right children at the right time. These factors
they are directly taught that skill or knowledge and re- are considered together because they are both tied di-
ceive sufficient opportunities to practice it. Some of rectly to the availability of accurate identification pro-
the word-level skills and knowledge these children will cedures at various age levels. That is, to be most effi-
3 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS SPRING/SUMMER 1998cient, a preventive program should be focused on the percent of children who scored
children who are most in need of special instruction. lowest on our predictive tests, our
The efficiency of the entire process will be improved false negative rate was 42 percent
if procedures are available to accurately target the (we missed almost half the chil-
right children very early in the process of reading in- dren who became extremely
struction. Although timing issues with regard to poor readers). However, when
preventive instruction have not been completely we identified the 20 percent of
resolved by research (Torgesen, et al., 1998), we children who scored lowest on
do know, for example, that instruction in our measures, the false nega-
phonological awareness during kinder- tive rate was reduced to 8 per-
garten can have a positive effect on cent. As a practical matter, if
reading growth after formal reading schools desire to maximize
instruction begins in the first grade their chances for early in-
(Lundberg, Frost, & Peterson, 1988). tervention with the most im-
Thus, I have proceeded on the as- paired children, they should pro-
sumption that it will be useful to vide this intervention to as many children as possi-
identify high-risk children at some ble.This is less of a waste of resources than it might
time during the kindergarten year seem at first glance, because, although many of
so that preventive work may begin the falsely identified children receiving interven-
as early as possible. tion may not be among the most seriously disabled
readers, most of them are likely to be below-average
readers (Torgesen & Burgess, 1998).
How accurate are currently Two other pieces of information are relevant to the
available early identification selection of procedures for early identification of chil-
dren at risk for reading difficulties. First, prediction ac-
procedures? curacy increases significantly the longer a child has
As stated earlier, the primary purpose of this article is been in school. Prediction of reading disabilities from
to make some practical suggestions about procedures tests given at the beginning of first grade is signifi-
and tests that can be used to identify children for pre- cantly more accurate than from tests administered dur-
ventive reading or prereading instruction. From the out- ing the first semester of kindergarten (Scarborough,
set, however, it is important to recognize that our ability 1998; Torgesen, Burgess, & Rashotte, 1996). Given the
to predict which children will have the most serious widely varying range of children’s preschool learning
reading difficulties is still far from perfect. For example, opportunities, many children may score low on early
in a recent comprehensive review of early identification identification instruments in the first semester of
research (1998), Scarborough pointed out that all stud- kindergarten simply because they have not had the op-
ies continue to report substantial levels of two kinds of portunity to learn the skills. However, if prereading
prediction errors. skills are actively taught in kindergarten, some of these
False positive errors are made when children who differences may be reduced by the beginning of the
will eventually become good readers score below the second semester of school. Thus, I would recommend
cut-off score on the predictive instrument and are that the screening procedures described here not be
falsely identified as “at risk.” In general, the proportion administered until the beginning of the second semes-
of this type of error has ranged between 20 percent ter of kindergarten, at which time they will be much
and 60 percent, with an average of around 45 percent. more efficient in identifying children who will require
That is, almost half of the children identified during more intensive preventive instruction in phonemic
kindergarten as “at risk” turn out not to have serious awareness and other early reading skills.
reading problems by the end of first grade. False nega- Second, although batteries containing multiple tests
tive errors occur when children who later exhibit generally provide better prediction than single instru-
reading problems are identified as not being at risk. ments, the increase in efficiency of multi-test batteries
Typical percentages of false negative errors range from is generally not large enough to warrant the extra time
10 percent to 50 percent, with an average of around and resources required to administer them (Scarbor-
22 percent.That is, on average, current procedures fail ough, 1998). Thus, I recommend an identification pro-
to identify about 22 percent of children who eventu- cedure involving administration of two tests: 1) a test
ally end up with serious reading difficulties. of knowledge of letter names or sounds; and 2) a mea-
In any given study, the relative proportion of false pos- sure of phonemic awareness. Measures of letter knowl-
itive and false negative errors is somewhat arbitrary, edge continue to be the best single predictor of read-
since it depends on the level of the cut-off score. For ex- ing difficulties, and measures of phonemic awareness
ample, we reported a significant reduction in the per- contribute additional predictive accuracy. In our expe-
centage of false negative errors within the same sample rience, tests of letter name knowledge are most predic-
of children by doubling the number of children we tive for kindergarten children, and tests of letter-sound
identified as at risk (Torgesen, in press; Torgesen & knowledge are most predictive for first graders. Since
Burgess, 1998). Our goal was to identify, during the first reading growth is influenced by noncognitive factors
semester of kindergarten, the children most at risk to be such as attention/motivation and home background
in the bottom 10 percent in word reading ability by the (Torgesen, et al., 1998), as well as specific knowledge
beginning of second grade. When we selected the 10
SPRING/SUMMER 1998 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 4and skills, scores from these objective tests word rhymes with cat: leg or mat?”) are not
might profitably be supplemented with included as measures of phonemic aware-
teacher ratings of behavior and attention ness because they appear to be measuring
to identify children most at risk for sub- something a little different, and less pre-
sequent difficulties in learning to read. dictive of reading disabilities, from those
measure that ask children to attend to
individual phonemes. For the same
How should phonemic reason, measures of syllable aware-
awareness be assessed? ness are not included in this group.
Since researchers first began to Measures of phonemic awareness
study phonological awareness in the that are suited for early identification
early 1970s, more than twenty different tasks purposes include the following three
have been used to measure awareness of phonemes widely used tests:
in words. These measures can be grouped into three The Phonological Awareness Test (Robertson &
broad categories: sound comparison, phoneme seg- Salter, 1995). This test contains five different measures
mentation, and phoneme blending. of phonemic awareness, plus a measure of sensitivity
■ Sound comparison tasks use a number of differ- to rhyme. The five measures of phonemic awareness
ent formats that all require children to make compar- are segmentation of phonemes, phoneme isolation,
isons between the sounds in different words. For ex- phoneme deletion, phoneme substitution, and
ample, a child might be asked to indicate which word phoneme blending.The phoneme isolation test, which
(of several) begins or ends with the same sound as a requires children to pronounce the first, last, or middle
target word (i.e., “Which word begins with the same sounds in words, would appear to have the most ap-
first sound as cat: boy, cake, or fan?”). Additionally, propriate level of difficulty for kindergarten screening
tasks that require children to generate words that have (the test should be easy enough so that only the most
the same first or last sound as a target word would fall delayed children will do poorly on it), and any of the
in this category. Sound comparison tasks are among others could be used for first- or second-grade assess-
the least difficult measures of phonemic awareness, ments. The Phonological Awareness Test is nationally
and thus are particularly appropriate for kindergarten normed on children from age five through nine, and it
age children. can be ordered from LinguiSystems, 3100 4th Avenue,
■ Phoneme segmentation tasks involve counting, East Moline, IL 61244-0747. Phone: 800-776-4332. The
pronouncing, deleting, adding, or reversing the individ- cost of a test manual, test supplies, and fifteen test
ual phonemes in words. Common examples of this booklets is $69.
type of task require pronouncing the individual The Test of Phonological Awareness (Torgesen &
phonemes in words (“Say the sounds in cat one at a Bryant, 1994).This test was designed as a group-admin-
time.”), deleting sounds from words (“Say card without istered test of phonemic awareness for kindergarten
saying the /d/ sound.”), or counting sounds (“Put one and first-grade children. It was specifically constructed
marker on the line for each sound you hear in the to be most sensitive to children with weaknesses in de-
word fast.”) velopment in this area, which helps make it appropri-
■ Phoneme blending skill has only been measured ate for identifying at-risk children. The kindergarten
by one kind of task. This is the sound-blending task in version of the test requires children to notice which
which the tester pronounces a series of phonemes in words (represented by pictures) begin with the same
isolation and asks the child to blend them together to first sound, while the first-grade version asks them to
form a word (i.e., “What word do these sounds make, compare words on the basis of their last sounds. It can
/f/ - /a/ - /t/?”). Easier variants of the sound-blending be easily administered to groups of five to ten children
task can be produced by allowing the child to choose at a time. The Test of Phonological Awareness is na-
from two or three pictures the word that is repre- tionally normed, and it can be ordered from PRO-ED
sented by a series of phonemes. Publishing Company, 8700 Shoal Creek Blvd., Austin,
TX 78757-6897. Phone: (512) 451-3246. The cost of a
In general, these different kinds of phonemic aware- test manual and a supply of fifty test forms (twenty-five
ness tasks all appear to be measuring essentially the kindergarten version, twenty-five elementary school
same construct, or ability. Although some research version) is $124.
(Yopp, 1988) has indicated that the tasks may involve The Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation
different levels of intellectual complexity, and there (Yopp, 1995) is a brief test of children’s ability to iso-
may be some differences between segmentation and late and pronounce the individual phonemes in words.
blending tasks at certain ages (Wagner, Torgesen, & This is a task that has been widely used in research on
Rashotte, 1994), for the most part, they all seem to be phoneme awareness over the past twenty years, and it
measuring growth in the same general ability (Hoien, is highly correlated with other measures of phoneme
et al., 1995; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984). awareness. The test was designed for children in
Sound comparison measures are easiest and are sensi- kindergarten, but it should also be appropriate for
tive to emergent levels of phonological awareness, identifying children who are weak in phonemic aware-
while segmentation and blending measures are sensi- ness during first grade. The test has twenty-two items
tive to differences among children during later stages that are all of the same type and that ask the child to
of development involving refinements in explicit levels pronounce each of the phonemes in words that vary
of awareness. Measures of sensitivity to rhyme (“Which from two to three phonemes in length. The test does
5 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS SPRING/SUMMER 1998not have norms with it, but it is available free in vol- acy environment and will almost certainly vary from
ume 49 (1995) of the widely read journal The Reading school to school across different communities. Tests
Teacher, pp. 20-29. with national norms can help to pinpoint classes or
schools in which a special effort must be made to en-
hance phonological awareness in children prior to, or
The measurement during, reading instruction. For example, a classroom
of letter knowledge in which 75 percent of the children performed below
In all of our research, we have measured letter the 20th percentile (in the bottom 20 percent of all
knowledge in two ways. We measure letter name children), will require more instructional resources to
knowledge by presenting each letter in simple upper- prepare children for learning to read than a classroom
case type on a single card and asking for its name.The in which only 10 percent of the children scored that
score on this test is simply the number of letters for low.Without norms, it is possible to identify weak chil-
which the child can give the appropriate name. We dren within a given class or school, but it is not possi-
measure letter-sound knowledge by presenting all let- ble to determine what proportion of children in the
ters in lower-case type and asking for the “sound the entire school may require intervention because of rela-
letter makes in words.” If a consonant letter can com- tively weak prereading skills and knowledge. On the
monly represent two different sounds (i.e., c, g) we one hand, if classroom resources allow extra help for
probe for the second sound, and we also ask for the only a fixed number of children (say, 20 percent to 30
long and short pronunciation of each vowel.The score percent), then measures without national norms can
is the total number of sounds the child can give. We be used to identify the group of children within the
have found that letter-name knowledge is a more sensi- classroom most in need of intervention. On the other
tive predictor for kindergarten children, while letter- hand, if the goal is to determine the amount of re-
sound knowledge is a better predictor for children in sources that may be needed to help all children with
first grade. Two tests that provide nationally standard- relatively weak skills in these areas, then normative
ized norms for performance on letter-name and letter- measures will be required.
sound knowledge are: The combination of letter knowledge and phonemic
The letter identification subtest of the Woodcock awareness tests I have recommended should take no
Reading Mastery Test-Revised (Woodcock, 1987). This more than ten to fifteen minutes per child to adminis-
test does not measure simple letter-name knowledge ter.The tests do not require highly trained personnel to
in the way we assess it, because it presents letters in administer them, although anyone who tests young
several different fonts, some of which may be unfamil- children must be very familiar with the tests and be
iar to children. It also allows children to give either the able to establish a supportive rapport.
name or the sound the letter makes in words. How-
ever, children who perform poorly in kindergarten (do
not know the names of very many letters) will not Monitoring growth
reach the more difficult items, so that their score in early reading skills
should be quite comparable to a more straightforward Once reading instruction begins, the best predictor
test of letter-name knowledge. The Reading Mastery of future reading growth is current reading achieve-
Test-Revised is available from American Guidance Ser- ment, and the most critical indicators of good progress
vice, 4201 Woodland Road, Circle Pines, MN 55014- in learning to read during the early elementary period
1796. Phone (800) 328-2560. The cost for the manual are measures of word reading skill. Children who end
and forms is $314.95. up as poor readers at the end of elementary school are
The graphemes subtest of the Phonological Aware- almost invariably those who fail to make normal
ness Test (Robertson & Salter, 1995).This test provides progress in these skills during the first years of elemen-
a comprehensive assessment of letter-sound knowl- tary school. These children are most frequently im-
edge extending from single consonants (i.e., b,c,k,m) paired in both the ability to apply phonetic strategies
through vowel digraphs and diphthongs (i.e., ea, ai, ow, in reading new words and in the ability to retrieve
oy).As mentioned before, it is standardized on children sight words from memory. They not only have diffi-
from aged five through nine. culty becoming accurate in the application of these
processes but also they frequently have special difficul-
ties with becoming fluent in their application. Before
Is it necessary for a test to be discussing specific methods for the diagnostic assess-
nationally standardized for it to be ment of these word reading skills, one general issue re-
garding reading assessment requires discussion.
useful in early identification? First, the assessment that will be recommended here
This issue is important because of the potential ex- is very different from the “authentic literacy assess-
pense of employing standardized measures in large- ment” that is currently advocated by many reading pro-
scale screening efforts. Nationally based norms are not fessionals (Paris, et al., 1992). Authentic assessment is
required to identify which children within a given different in at least two ways from the reading assess-
classroom or school are weakest in phonemic aware- ment measures we will be discussing. First, the goal of
ness and letter knowledge. However, the proportion of “authentic assessment” is to measure children’s applica-
children who come to school with weak skills and tion of broad literacy skills to authentic tasks, like gath-
knowledge in these areas will depend somewhat on ering information for a report, use of literacy as a
specific aspects of their preschool language and liter- medium for social interactions, or ability to read a selec-
SPRING/SUMMER 1998 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 6tion and then write a response to it. It also seeks to example of this kind of diagnostic test. It consists of a
measure children’s enjoyment, ownership, and involve- series of increasingly complex nonwords that children
ment in literacy activities both at school and at home. are asked to “sound out as best they can.” The three
This kind of assessment is a clear complement to easiest items on the test are ree, ip, and din; items of
the type of assessments we will describe for monitor- moderate difficulty are rejune, depine, and viv; and
ing growth in word level reading skills. All of the liter- the three hardest items are pnir, ceisminadolt, and
acy outcomes that are part of authentic assessment are byrcal. Because the words are presented out of con-
important parts of a total literacy assessment program. text, they stress the child’s ability to fully analyze each
After all, if a child can read, but does not enjoy reading word to produce the correct pronunciation. On the
and does not apply important literacy skills to every- other hand, measures such as this do not allow an as-
day tasks, then some important goals of literacy in- sessment of children’s ability to combine phonetic de-
struction have not been attained. coding with use of context to arrive at a word’s cor-
However, since these procedures are focused on rect pronunciation. However, since both good and
high-level reading outcomes, they cannot provide pre- poor readers appear able to use context equally well
cise information about level of performance on impor- (as long as the context is understood, Share &
tant subskills in reading. If a child’s overall perfor- Stanovich, 1995), this is not an important omission on
mance on authentic literacy tasks is limited, it is fre- a diagnostic measure of word reading ability.
quently difficult to obtain a precise estimate of the Word reading fluency. Word reading fluency mea-
specific component skills that are weak. The goal of sures have typically measured rate of reading con-
the kind of assessments we will discuss here is to nected text. One of the more widely used measures in
quantify the degree of skill a child possesses in word this area is the Gray Oral Reading Test-3rd Edition.
identification processes that have been shown to be a (Wiederholt & Bryant, 1992). This test consists of thir-
critical foundation for overall reading success. teen increasingly difficult passages, each followed by
five comprehension questions. A measure of oral read-
ing rate is obtained by recording the time it takes for
Commonly used diagnostic the child to read each passage. One potential problem
measures of word reading ability with the Gray Oral Reading Test is that it does not pro-
It is beyond the scope of this article to identify all vide a very sensitive measure of individual differences
the available tests of word level reading skills. Rather, I in word reading ability at very low levels of perfor-
will provide examples of measurement strategies from mance, such as those found in beginning first graders,
the most commonly used measures. or disabled readers through second grade. The pas-
Sight word reading ability. Two measures are widely sages simply begin at too high a level for children with
used in this area, and both involve the same assessment very poor or undeveloped reading skills to display the
strategy.The Word Identification subtest from the Wood- word reading skills they actually possess.
cock Reading Mastery Test-Revised (Woodcock, 1987), In an effort to provide measures of fluency and ac-
and the reading subtest of the Wide Range Achieve- curacy in word reading skill that are simple to adminis-
ment Test-3 (Wilkinson, 1995) both require children to ter and sensitive to individual differences across a
read lists of words that gradually increase in length and broad range of reading skills, we are currently develop-
complexity while decreasing in frequency of occur- ing simple measures of Word Reading Efficiency and
rence in printed English. For example, the easiest three NonWord Efficiency (Torgesen & Wagner, 1997). In
words on the Word Identification subtest are go, the, both of these measures, children are shown lists of in-
and me, words of mid-level difficulty are pioneer, in- creasingly difficult words and nonwords and asked to
quire, and wealth, and the hardest three are read as many words as possible in forty-five seconds.
epigraphist, facetious, and shillelagh. There are two forms to each test, and the child’s score
Neither of these widely used tests place stringent is simply the average number of words read in forty-
time pressure on students, so both phonetic decoding five seconds. Initial evaluations indicate that these
processes and sight word processes can be used to measures are very reliable (parallel form reliabilities
identify words on these lists. Both tests have been vary between .97 and .98 for kindergarten through
normed nationally, and one of their strengths is that fifth grade).They are also highly correlated with corre-
they allow a direct assessment of children’s ability to sponding measures from the Woodcock Reading Mas-
identify words solely on the basis of the word’s ter Test-Revised at early grades (when children often
spelling.When reading text, children also have context run out of words they can read before they run out of
clues available to assist word identification, and thus time, correlations range from .89 to .94) and slightly
text-based measures, although they may be more “au- less correlated (.86 to .88) at fourth grade, when flu-
thentic” in one sense, are less direct in their assessment ency of word reading processes becomes more impor-
of the kinds of word-processing skills that are particu- tant to performance on the tests.These tests have been
larly deficient in children with reading problems. standardized nationally and will be available from PRO-
Phonetic reading ability. The single best measure of ED publishing company in late summer 1998. If a sin-
children’s ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound gle form of each test is administered, it will provide in-
correspondences in decoding words is provided by dices of growth in phonetic decoding and sight word
measures of nonword reading (Share & Stanovich, reading that can be administered several times during
1995).The Word Attack subtest of the Woodcock Read- the year and that take a very short amount of time to
ing Mastery Test-Revised (Woodcock, 1987) is a good give.
7 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS SPRING/SUMMER 1998To summarize, adequate monitoring of the growth 1996. Remedial and Special Education, 18, 197-213.
of children’s word reading abilities should include out- Nagy, W.E., Herman, P.A., & Anderson, R.C. (1985). Learning words
from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 233-253.
of-context measures of word reading ability, phonetic Oka, E., & Paris, S. (1986). Patterns of motivation and reading skills in
decoding ability (as measured by ability to read non- underachieving children. In S. Ceci (Ed.), Handbook of cognitive,
words), and word reading fluency. The fluency mea- social, and neuropsychological aspects of learning disabilities
sures become more important after about second to (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
third grade, when children have acquired a fund of Rashotte, C.A., Torgesen, J.K., & Wagner, R.K. (1997). Growth in read-
ing accuracy and fluency as a result of intensive intervention.
word reading skills they can apply with reasonable ac- Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Florida Branch of
curacy. Measures that involve out-of-context word read- the International Dyslexia Association, Miami, FL, September.
ing more directly assess the kinds of word reading Scarborough, H.S. (1998). Early identification of children at risk for
skills that are particularly problematic for children reading disabilities: Phonological awareness and some other
with reading disabilities because they eliminate the promising predictors. In Shapiro, B.K., Accardo, P.J., & Capute, A.J.
contextual support on which these children rely heav- (Eds.) Specific Reading Disability: A view of the spectrum. (pp. 75-
120).Timonium, MD:York Press, Inc.
ily. To obtain a complete picture of overall reading de- Share, D.L., & Stanovich, K.E. (1995). Cognitive processes in early read-
velopment, however, it is also important to observe the ing development:A model of acquisition and individual differences.
way that the child integrates all sources of information Issues in Education: Contributions from Educational Psychology,
about words in text, and this can only be estimated by 1, 1-57.
carefully observing children as they read connected Siegel, L.S. (1989). IQ is irrelevant to the definition of learning disabili-
ties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22, 469-479.
passages. l Stanovich, K.E., & Siegel, L.S. (1994).The phenotypic performance pro-
file of reading-disabled children: A regression-based test of the
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SPRING/SUMMER 1998 AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 8You can also read
