The present contribution aims at presenting an assessment tool (i.e., the TALK-assessment) built to evaluate the language development and school readiness of Italian preschoolers before they enter primary school, and its predictive validity for the children's reading and writing skills at the end of the first year of primary school. The early…

Preschool has been recognized as an optimal time to provide behavioral and emotional supports to children; however, there is a need to examine the stability, accuracy, and predictive validity of universal emotional and behavioral screening scores in early childhood to inform procedures for repeated screenings across time. The present study…

Despite the claim by several researchers that variability in performance may complicate the identification of "at-risk" children, variability in the academic performance of young children remains an undervalued area of research. The goal of this study is to examine the predictive validity for future scores and the score stability of two…

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity evidence of first-grade Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) scores for predicting third-grade reading comprehension scores. We used the "simple view" of reading as the theoretical foundation for examining the extent to which DIBELS subtest scores predict…

The Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, Second Edition (NNAT2), is used widely to screen students for possible inclusion in talent development programs. The NNAT2 claims to provide a more culturally neutral evaluation of general ability than tests such as Form 6 of the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT6), which has Verbal and Quantitative batteries in…

This study investigated the predictive validity of a dynamic assessment designed to evaluate later risk for reading difficulty in bilingual Latino children at risk for language impairment. During kindergarten, 63 bilingual Latino children completed a dynamic assessment nonsense-word recoding task that yielded pretest to posttest gain scores,…

The purpose of our research was to examine a web-based tool for mathematics progress monitoring in first grade. The newly developed assessment tool uses several robust indicators and curriculum-based measures forming three competences (Basic Precursors, Advanced Precursors, and Computation) to determine comprehensive early numeracy skills in…

Early childhood professional organizations support teachers as the best assessors of students' academic, social, emotional, and physical development. This study investigates the predictive nature of teacher ratings of first-grade students' performance on a standards-based curriculum-embedded performance assessment within the context of a state…

This study used data from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2002) oral reading fluency (ORF) probes to examine variation among different ORF score types (i.e., the median of three passages, the mean of all three passages, the mean of passages 2 and 3, and the score from passage 3) in predicting…

The present study investigated the differential predictive validity of the Initial Skills Analysis. In the fall, these reading screening tests were administered to students in Grades K to 3. In the spring, a series of reading outcomes tests were administered to these same students, and teachers provided judgments of the students' reading skills.…

This article describes efforts to examine the validity of a screening process that provides objective data for multidisciplinary team meetings where consideration is being given to teacher referral of a student for assessment and possible placement in special education. In this study, the accuracy with which this process, called Problem Validation…