Early reading performance: a comparison of teacher-based and test-based assessments

Kindergarten Screening for Risk of Reading Failure

Despite the effectiveness of early intervention with children at risk for reading failure, few cost-effective, reliable, and valid early screening tests exist for identification of those at risk. This paper discusses the development of the Literacy Screening Battery (LSB). The LSB, a group-administered test for identification of kindergarten children at risk for reading failure, was validated across three cohorts of children in 26 school districts. Based on a model of reading as an interactive process composed of early-developing, lower-level skills (e.g., phonological awareness, logographic ability) and later-developing, higher-level processes (vocabulary, syntactical knowledge), the LSB was designed to be used for instructional planning as children begin formal reading instruction. Psychometric studies support the theoretical basis of the LSB and its usefulness in predicting up to 81% of the children who had poor reading outcomes in first, second, or third grade.

Teacher and Classroom Characteristics Associated With Teachers’ Ratings of Prekindergartners’ Relationships and Behaviors

Teachers’ ratings of children’s competencies may in part reflect characteristics and perspectives of teachers who assigned the ratings, which compromises their validity as a measure of child attributes. The purposes of this study were to use multilevel modeling to (a) estimate between-rater variance in teachers’ ratings of children’s social behaviors and relationships with teachers and (b) examine characteristics of teachers and classrooms associated with teachers’ perceptions of these social competencies. Ratings of 711 children completed by 210 prekindergarten teachers indicated that between 15% and 33% of the total variance in teachers’ ratings was attributed to mean differences between raters. After controlling for characteristics of children and their families, teachers’ ratings of positive relationships and behaviors were associated with fewer years of experience, higher self-efficacy, non-White race/ethnicity, shorter length programs, better child-teacher ratios, and programs located within school settings. Implications are discussed for interpreting and analyzing teachers’ ratings of children’s competencies.

Evaluating a web-based clinical decision support system for language disorders screening in a nursery school

Background

Early and effective identification of developmental disorders during childhood remains a critical task for the international community. The second highest prevalence of common developmental disorders in children are language delays, which are frequently the first symptoms of a possible disorder.

Objective

This paper evaluates a Web-based Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) whose aim is to enhance the screening of language disorders at a nursery school. The common lack of early diagnosis of language disorders led us to deploy an easy-to-use CDSS in order to evaluate its accuracy in early detection of language pathologies. This CDSS can be used by pediatricians to support the screening of language disorders in primary care.

Methods

This paper details the evaluation results of the “Gades” CDSS at a nursery school with 146 children, 12 educators, and 1 language therapist. The methodology embraces two consecutive phases. The first stage involves the observation of each child’s language abilities, carried out by the educators, to facilitate the evaluation of language acquisition level performed by a language therapist. Next, the same language therapist evaluates the reliability of the observed results.

Results

The Gades CDSS was integrated to provide the language therapist with the required clinical information. The validation process showed a global 83.6% (122/146) success rate in language evaluation and a 7% (7/94) rate of non-accepted system decisions within the range of children from 0 to 3 years old. The system helped language therapists to identify new children with potential disorders who required further evaluation. This process will revalidate the CDSS output and allow the enhancement of early detection of language disorders in children. The system does need minor refinement, since the therapists disagreed with some questions from the CDSS knowledge base (KB) and suggested adding a few questions about speech production and pragmatic abilities. The refinement of the KB will address these issues and include the requested improvements, with the support of the experts who took part in the original KB development.

Conclusions

This research demonstrated the benefit of a Web-based CDSS to monitor children’s neurodevelopment via the early detection of language delays at a nursery school. Current next steps focus on the design of a model that includes pseudo auto-learning capacity, supervised by experts.

Assessing educational outcomes in middle childhood: validation of the Teacher Academic Attainment Scale

AIM

Assessing educational outcomes in high-risk populations is crucial for defining long-term outcomes. As standardized tests are costly and time-consuming, we assessed the use of the Teacher Academic Attainment Scale (TAAS) as an outcome measure.

METHOD

Three hundred and forty three children in mainstream schools aged 10 to 11 years (144 males, 199 females; 190 extremely preterm and 153 term; mean age 10 y 9 mo, SD 5.5 mo, range 9 y 8 mo-12 y 3 mo) were assessed using the reading and mathematics scales of the criterion standard Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, 2nd (UK) edition (WIAT-II). Class teachers completed the TAAS, a seven-item questionnaire for assessing academic attainment. The TAAS was also completed at 6 years of age for 266 children.

RESULTS

Cronbach's alpha 0.95 indicated excellent internal consistency, and the correlation between TAAS scores at 6 and 11 years indicated good test-retest reliability (r=0.77, p<0.001). Significantly higher TAAS scores for term vs preterm children demonstrated discriminative validity. TAAS scores at 6 and 11 years were significantly correlated with WIAT-II reading (r=0.69 and 0.75, p<0.001) and mathematics (r=0.75 and 0.82, p<0.001) scores, demonstrating good predictive and concurrent validity respectively. TAAS scores of <2.5 were good predictors of learning difficulties.

INTERPRETATION

The TAAS is a brief, psychometrically sound teacher-report of academic attainment that yields continuous and categorical outcomes. It provides a cost- and time-efficient outcome measure for large-scale studies.

Teacher identification of children at risk for language impairment in the first year of school

While the first 3 years of formal schooling have obvious importance for the transition to literacy, it must be remembered that learning to read is a linguistically-based task that draws heavily on mastery of key oral-language skills such as phonemic and morphological awareness, vocabulary development, and early syntax. In order to support the transition to literacy, and because oral language competence is important in its own right, it is vital that early-years teachers are skilled at identifying children who may be at risk of oral language impairment. In this study, 15 teachers completed the Children's Communication Checklist (second edition) on children in their first year of school (n = 149), and ratings were compared with results of screening using the Clinical Examination of Language Fundamentals Screening Test (fourth edition). Teacher ratings showed poor sensitivity and specificity in identifying children whose oral language skills require further investigation. Results are discussed in the light of recommendations for teacher pre-service education, SLP advocacy for oral language competence as a life-long determinant of health, issues in screening during the early years of school, and implications for further research.

The role of the teacher in identifying learning disabilities: a study using the McCarney Learning Disability Evaluation Scale (LDES)

The purpose of the study was to examine whether the Greek translation of the Learning Disability Evaluation Scale (LDES) can be used in the identification of learning disabilities. The LDES was completed by 165 teachers for one of their students, aged 5 to 14 years. The LDES was significantly correlated to students' grades in Math and Greek Language and to the Reading Ability Test. Scores on LDES from the above randomly selected sample were significantly different from scores on LDES for another sample of 47 students, who were manifesting learning disabilities, indicating that the LDES can distinguish between the two samples. The exploratory factor analysis revealed that the LDES maintains the original factor structure and the reliability values supported its internal consistency. Results and limitations are discussed.

Identifying learning problems in children evaluated for ADHD: the Academic Performance Questionnaire

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to assess the usefulness of the Academic Performance Questionnaire (APQ) to identify low reading and math achievement in children who are being evaluated for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

METHODS

Charts of 997 patients who were seen in a multidisciplinary ADHD evaluation program were reviewed. Patients who were in first-through sixth-grade and had complete APQ and Wechsler Individual Achievement Test II Basic Reading and Numerical Operations subtests were enrolled in this study. The 271 eligible patients were randomly assigned to a score-development group (n = 215) and a validation group (n=56). By using data from the score-development sample, APQ questions that predicted low academic achievement were identified and the scores for these questions were entered into a logistic regression to identify the APQ questions that independently predicted low achievement.

RESULTS

Only 2 APQ questions, 1 about reading and 1 about math, independently predicted low achievement. By using these 2 questions, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.834, and the optimal combination of sensitivity and specificity occurred when the total score for the 2 items was >4. This cutoff had a sensitivity of 0.86 and a specificity of 0.63 in the score-development group and a sensitivity of 1.0 and a specificity of 0.53 in the validation sample.

CONCLUSIONS

The APQ may be a useful screening tool to identify children being evaluated for ADHD who need additional testing for learning problems. Although the predictive value of a negative screen on the APQ is good, the predictive value of a positive test is relatively low.

Validation of the Gifted Rating Scales-School Form in China

The Gifted Rating Scales-School Form (GRS-S), a teacher-completed rating scale, is designed to identify five types of giftedness and motivation. This study examines the reliability and validity of a Chinese-translated version of the GRS-S with a sample of Chinese elementary and middle school students (N = 499). The Chinese GRSS was found to have high internal consistency. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis corroborated the six-factor solution of the original GRS-S. Comparison of the GRS-S scores and measures of academic performance provide preliminary support for the criterion validity of the Chinese-translated GRS-S. Significant age and gender differences on the Chinese GRS-S were found. Results provide preliminary support for the Chinese version of the GRS-S as a reliable and valid measure of giftedness for Chinese students.

Kindergarten risk factors, cognitive factors, and teacher judgments as predictors of early reading in Dutch

This study focused on the predictive value of risk factors, cognitive factors, and teachers' judgments in a sample of 462 kindergartners for their early reading skills and reading failure at the beginning of Grade 1. With respect to risk factors, enrollment in speech-language therapy, history of dyslexia or speech-language problems in the family, and the role of gender were considered. None of these risk factors were significantly related to reading performance. Cognitive factors in this study included letter knowledge, rapid naming ability, and nonword repetition skills. Of these skills, letter knowledge seemed to have the highest correlation with reading. Kindergarten teachers' judgments, including a task assignment scale and teachers' predictions, demonstrated a significant relationship with reading. Finally, to judge whether these predictors could identify reading disabilities, the discriminatory power of all predictors was assessed and appeared to be insufficient. Implications for screening purposes are discussed.