What Happened to Using Data to Inform Instruction and Intervention in Grades K–2?

I worked with educators in Texas and Florida for two decades to develop and implement early literacy assessments. In recent years, it appears school leaders are less likely to administer early literacy assessments to inform instruction and intervention in grades K–2. At the same time, reading proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Proficiency (NAEP, 2022) has decreased in grades 4 and 8, especially for low-performing students. There may be multiple reasons for this decline in assessing early literacy and using results to prevent reading problems: Cost, loss of instructional time, weariness from data overload, lack of alignment with standards-based instruction, over-identification of at-risk students, and insufficient professional development in how to administer the assessments and how to translate results to instruction.

My research shows that reading success is associated with the interaction of quality teaching, curriculum, and students’ reading ability (Foorman, Schatschneider, et al., 2006; Foorman, 2023). Valid and reliable early literacy assessments can identify students’ reading ability. High-quality professional development ensures accurate administration and translation of results to instruction. I will address these issues in my webinar, “What Happened to Using Data to Inform Instruction and Intervention in Grades K–2?”

I will discuss:

• The valid constructs that predict reading success and how they can be reliably measured, including language measures which are often neglected in reading assessments (Foorman, Petscher, & Herrera, 2018).
• The definition of assessment terms such as sensitivity/specificity and positive/negative predictive power and provide an example of diagnostic utility (Petscher, Kim, & Foorman, 2011).
• Educators’ assessment concerns and what education resource providers need to do to address those concerns.
• Evidence-based practices that guide literacy instruction in grades K–2 (Foorman, Beyler, et al., 2016), including the importance of lexical quality (Perfetti, 2007) and orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014).
• Examples of formative measures teachers can administer in K–2 classrooms to set instructional objectives for individual students.

I hope you’ll join me for the webinar.

Learn more

References

Ehri, L. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading 18(1), 5-21.

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3^rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/21

Foorman, B., Petscher, Y., & Herrera, S. (2018). Unique and common effects of oral language in predicting reading comprehension in grades 1-10. Learning and Individual Differences, 63, 12-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2018.02.011

Foorman, B., Petscher, Y., Stanley, C., & Truckenmiller, A. (2017). Latent profiles of reading and language and their association with standardized reading outcomes in kindergarten through tenth grade. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 10(3), 619-645. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2016.1237597

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2022). The nation’s report card. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022/

Perfetti, C. (2007). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11, 357-383

Petscher, Y., Kim, Y., Foorman, B. (2011). The Importance of predictive power in early  Screening assessments:  Implications for placement in a response to intervention framework. Assessment for Effective Instruction, 36(3), 158-166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534508410396698