Further exploration of the predictive validity of growth on early reading curriculum-based measures among students at risk for reading difficulties

A variety of early literacy assessments are available to monitor student response to instruction in early reading skills. The purpose of this study was to explore the degree to which growth during the second half of kindergarten on measures of alphabetic principle (i.e., nonsense word fluency [NWF]) and word reading (i.e., decodable real words and word reading fluency [WRF]) predicted oral reading fluency (ORF) at the end of kindergarten and first grade, over and above January baseline performance. A total of 394 kindergarten students were monitored on each assessment every 2 weeks between January and May. The unique contribution of this study was the evaluation of the degree to which the predictive value of growth on these measures differed as a function of student skills in oral reading via quantile regression. Doing so revealed whether different word-level assessments were better suited for less skilled or more skilled readers. In addition, the utility of growth in different metrics on measures of NWF (i.e., correct letter sequences [CLS] and whole words read [WWR]) was explored. Results suggested that measures of more complex skills such as WRF and NWF-WWR were most predictive of general reading outcomes among students with high subsequent ORF. The value of measuring growth, relative to baseline performance, was even more apparent when predicting performance at the end of first grade.