Kindergarten Screening for Risk of Reading Failure

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Abstract
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.