The present study explored the reading skills of a sample of 48 adults enrolled in a basic education program in northern Florida, United States. Previous research has reported on reading component skills for students in adult education settings, but little is known about eye movement patterns or their relation to reading skills for this…

Confirmatory factor analyses of data from 1,501 kindergarten to 5th-grade children who completed 3 measures of decoding, 3 measures of reading comprehension, and 3 measures of listening comprehension as part of a larger study were used to identify the dimensionality of reading skills across elementary school. A 1-factor (reading) model was the…

Although extant studies indicate that there is a strong association between attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and reading ability in elementary school children, knowledge regarding the relation between inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive behaviors and emergent literacy in preschool children is less established. This study examined the…

The present study explores the longitudinal development between Grade 3 word level reading skills and higher level semantic skills to Grade 10 reading comprehension for 3,157 students. In particular, this work focused on how the developmental relations varied for subsamples of students who are English learners (EL; N = 308), students identified as…

Screening and monitoring student reading progress can be costly and time consuming. Assessment embedded within the context of online instructional programs can capture ongoing student performance data while limiting testing time outside of instruction. This paper presents two studies that examined the validity of using performance measures from a…

The population of Spanish-speaking preschoolers in the United States continues to increase and there is a significant need to develop psychometrically sound early language and literacy screening measures to accurately capture children's ability in Spanish. In this paper, we describe the innovative design and calibration process of the new…

Research on the development of reading skills through the primary school years has pointed to the importance of individual differences in initial ability as well as the growth of those skills. Additionally, it has been theorized that reading skills develop incrementally. The present study examined the genetic and environmental influences on 2…

Reading comprehension--the ability to understand the meaning of text--is a foundational ability that enables children to learn in school and throughout life. Children who struggle with reading comprehension in the third or fourth grade are at high risk for dropping out of school, with detrimental effects on their future employment, income, and…

Florida requires that students who do not meet grade-level reading proficiency standards on the end-of-year state assessment (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, FCAT) receive intensive reading intervention. With the stakes so high, teachers and principals are interested in using screening or diagnostic assessments to identify students with a…

In the present study, we examined oral and silent reading fluency and their relations with reading comprehension. In a series of structural equation models with latent variables using data from 316 first-grade students, (a) silent and oral reading fluency were found to be related yet distinct forms of reading fluency, (b) silent reading fluency…

Many in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) agree that interaction is a critical component in the process of second language acquisition (Hatch 1978; Long, 1996; Pica 1994). According to Long (1996), second language (L2) learners have the best chance of successful L2 acquisition when placed in an environment in which conversational…

We examined the relations of teacher knowledge (n = 42 first-grade teachers), explicit decoding instruction provided, and students' (n = 437) word-reading gains. Results revealed an interaction between teacher knowledge and observed decoding instruction: For students of more knowledgeable teachers, more time in explicit instruction predicted…

We evaluated the validity of DIBELS ("Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills") ORF ("Oral Reading Fluency") for predicting performance on the "Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test" (FCAT-SSS) and "Stanford Achievement Test" (SAT-10) reading comprehension measures. The usefulness of previously…

Although literacy skills needed to engage in the economy and public life have grown, the literacy skills of many adolescents remain low. One popular approach to improving student literacy is using school-based reading coaches; however, there is little empirical evidence regarding the nature of coaching and its effectiveness in changing teacher…

Despite recent progress in reading achievement among children in primary grades, many children are not moving beyond basic decoding skills to fluency and comprehension as they go on to higher grades. To address this problem, many policymakers suggest that reading coaches -- master teachers who offer ongoing on-site instructional support for…