As access to higher education increases, it is important to monitor students with special needs to facilitate the provision of appropriate resources and support. Although metrics such as the "reading readiness" ACT (formerly American College Testing) of provide insight into how many students may need such resources, they do not specify…

As access to higher education increases, it is important to monitor students with special needs to facilitate the provision of appropriate resources and support. Although metrics such as ACT's (formerly American College Testing) "reading readiness" provide insight into how many students may need such resources, they do not specify…

The relationship between computer-based and paper-based testing may vary. Students with special needs may or may not perform better on computer-based testing compared to paper-based testing. Over the past few decades, computers and technology have increased in society and in classrooms. The use of technology has increased during the era of the…

Traditional static tests of reading and reading-related skills offer some ability to predict future reading performance, though such screeners may misclassify children with or at risk of reading disorder (RD). Dynamic assessment (DA) is an alternative approach that measures learning potential and may be less dependent on learning background. A…

To investigate the impact of universal testing accommodations on a computer-based reading comprehension test, accessibility, reliability, and validity were evaluated. Tests with and without accommodations were administered to 131 twelfth-grade students in three U.S. schools. Scores on Curriculum-Based Measurement probes determined groups of…

In this study, we validated the "ReadFree tool", a computerised battery of 12 visual and auditory tasks developed to identify poor readers also in minority-language children (MLC). We tested the task-specific discriminant power on 142 Italian-monolingual participants (8-13 years old) divided into monolingual poor readers (N = 37) and…

Tele-assessments may enable specialist evaluation of students in schools and their progress following intervention. The aim of this project was to evaluate the feasibility of using videoconferencing technology to assess students with reading difficulties in the school setting and obtain the perspectives of teachers supporting the students during…

Originally designed for students in Grades 3 through 5, MOCCA (formerly the Multiple-choice Online Causal Comprehension Assessment), identifies students who struggle with comprehension, and helps uncover why they struggle. There are many reasons why students might not comprehend what they read. They may struggle with decoding, or reading words…

MOCCA is an online assessment of inferential reading comprehension for students in 3rd through 6th grades. It can be used to identify good readers and, for struggling readers, identify those who overly rely on either a Paraphrasing process or an Elaborating process when their comprehension is incorrect. Here a propensity to over-rely on…

Curriculum Based Measurements (CBM) are a widely-used tool for Response to Intervention (RTI) progress monitoring. In addition, they can be used in the determination of learning disabilities and special education qualification. The most widely used type of CBM is a measure of oral reading fluency (ORF). This type involves having a student read out…

Although several measures are available for monitoring kindergarten reading progress, little research has directly compared them to determine which are superior in predicting year-end reading skills relative to other measures, and how validity may change across the school year as reading skills develop. A sample of 426 kindergarten students who…

Rhythm plays an organisational role in the prosody and phonology of language, and children with literacy difficulties have been found to demonstrate poor rhythmic perception. This study explored whether students' performance on a simple rhythm task at school entry could serve as a predictor of whether they would face difficulties in word reading…

Reading difficulties in school are very challenging for teachers due to many different reader subtypes in one and the same class. Moreover, there are few easy-to-use tools enabling teachers to assess reading ability. According to the Simple View of Reading (Hoover and Gough in "Reading and Writing", 2(2), 127-160, 1990), efficient…

This demonstration introduces and presents an innovative online cognitive diagnostic assessment, developed to identify the types of cognitive processes that readers use during comprehension; specifically, processes that distinguish between subtypes of struggling comprehenders. Cognitive diagnostic assessments are designed to provide valuable…

Background: Predicated on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD), dynamic assessment (DA) integrates teaching with assessment in a single activity by providing mediation to help learners perform beyond their independent functioning and simultaneously promote learner development. It advantages over traditional psychometric tests in that DA…