The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability, validity, and predictive utility of 3 measures for screening kindergarten students for risk for math difficulty (MD). The screening measures assessed number sense and computational fluency, constructs central to typical early mathematical development. Conceptual and operational outcomes…

The purpose of this study was to identify potential general outcome indicators (GOIs) of language proficiency. Brief narratives were elicited from 45 kindergarten, first-grade, and third-grade children using single-picture scenes and a standardized protocol. Measures of language productivity, verbal fluency, and grammaticality were examined for…

The predictive validity of early literacy skills of children among preschool is relatively unknown. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to provide this examination. From a sample of preschoolers, longitudinal data were available for 143 of the children in kindergarten and for 116 of them through the end of first grade. Preschool children…

The assessment of early literacy skills during the kindergarten year can provide useful information about student performance in prereading skills, which are predictors of later reading achievement. This study examined the use of fluency-based prompts of student phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, and oral reading at the end of kindergarten…

Research was conducted to evaluate how well the "Indiana Reading Assessment--Kindergarten" evaluates various reading skills of kindergarten students. Multiple analyses were conducted; while the results of all the analyses were encouraging, the results derived from the concurrent validity study were most significant. All correlations were…

The validity of three subtests of the Dynamic Indicators for Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) was investigated for kindergarten children in a large urban school district. A stratified, random sample of 330 participants was drawn from an entire cohort of kindergarten children. Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and Nonsense…

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.…

A major advance in the field of reading over the past 15 years has been the development and validation of screening measures that can detect with reasonable accuracy those kindergartners and first graders likely to experience difficulty in learning to read. Increasingly, these students now receive additional instructional support during the…

The purpose of this research was to establish the concurrent and predictive validity of the Phelps Kindergarten Readiness Scale, Second Edition (PKRS-II; L. Phelps, 2003). Seventy-four kindergarten students of diverse ethnic backgrounds enrolled in a northeastern suburban school participated in the study. The concurrent administration of the…

In this study, predictive classification accuracy was used to select those tasks from a kindergarten screening battery that best identified children who, three years later, were classified as educable mentally handicapped or as having a specific learning disability. A subset of measures enabled correct classification of 91% of the children in…

The purpose of this followup study was to determine the long-term predictive validity of theoretically coherent reading measures administered during fall and winter of kindergarten. Seventy-nine children were screened using measures representing letter identification, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid automatized naming.…

This study examines the predictive relationships among 309 Asian American and 9471 European American parents' beliefs, expectations, and involvement, and their children's math and reading achievement trajectories during children's transition to school. Data came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), an ongoing…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS), a teacher-rating instrument of interactive play behaviors for early childhood, was valid for urban, low-income children in kindergarten. The PIPPS demonstrated construct validity, and yielded three dimensions of interactive peer play: Play Interaction,…

As recent research efforts have focused on preventing reading difficulties and enhancing the effectiveness of special education services for students with reading problems, similar efforts in mathematics have not been realized. This article describes the development and preliminary field testing of a set of measures designed to screen students in…

This study assesses the predictive validity of the Phelps Kindergarten Readiness Scale (PKRS) for later academic achievement and explores the utility of a domain-specific measure of kindergarten readiness. Kindergarten readiness scores were significantly correlated with both math and language arts achievement as measured by New York State…