Introduction:  On July 7, 2005 the Oklahoma State Board of Education (SBE) approved screening assessments for use with the Reading Sufficiency Act.  The following assessments were recommended by the Oklahoma Commission for Teacher Preparation and received approval for use with the Reading Sufficiency Act.

Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST)
Literacy First Phonics Assessment
Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) Oral Reading Fluency Assessment

Reading Goal:  The reading goal for Oklahoma public schools is as follows:  By July 1, 2008, and each year thereafter, all third grade students will read at or above grade level by the end of their third grade year.

Each public elementary school shall determine its baseline not later than September 1, 2005, which shall be the percentage of students scoring satisfactory or above on the third grade criterion referenced test in reading.  (Oklahoma Senate Bill 996)

1. Description of Assessments

   1. Phonological Awareness Skills Test

   2. Literacy First Phonics Assessment

   3. Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) Oral Reading Fluency Assessment

2. Literacy First Recommended Screening Instruments (kindergarten – grade three)

3. Literacy First Benchmarks

   1. Literacy First Recommendations for Reading Sufficiency Plans
   2. "On Grade Level" Criteria as Measured by Literacy First Assessments

4. Purchasing Literacy First Assessments

5. Validity/Reliability Summary of Two Literacy First Assessments

6. Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) Oral Reading Fluency Assessment

I.  Description of Assessments

 A.  Phonological Awareness Skills Test

            The Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST) is an individually administered assessment tool used to determine the Zone of Proximal Development, or correct instructional level, for students. Once this information is obtained, it can be an invaluable guide to grouping students for specific skill instruction. It is also used to monitor progress in acquiring phonological awareness skills, and is aligned with the Phonological Awareness Skills Sequence. Ideally, reassessment will be an ongoing process as students master skills; minimally, students should be reassessed at each grading period.

             Skills assessed: concept of spoken word; rhyme recognition and production; syllable blending, segmentation and deletion; phoneme isolation of initial and final sounds, phoneme blending, phoneme segmentation, phoneme deletion of initial and final sounds, phoneme deletion of the first sound in a blend, phoneme substitution.

 B.  Literacy First Phonics Assessment

            The Literacy First Phonics Assessment is designed as a useful classroom tool for teachers to determine which phonics patterns their students have mastered, and to determine the Zone of Proximal Development, or correct instructional level, for individual students. Once this information is obtained, it can be an invaluable guide to grouping students for specific skill instruction. It is also used to monitor progress in acquiring phonics skills, and is aligned with the Literacy First Phonics Continuum. The assessment is given individually and is meant to be a quick assessment. Pseudo words are included on this assessment as a way to indicate whether or not the student has actually internalized the decoding skills necessary to read words correctly and with ease. Ideally, reassessment will be an ongoing process as students master skills; minimally, students should be reassessed at each grading period.

             Skills assessed: consonant sounds, consonant names (lower and upper case); vowels (identifying short sounds, long sounds, vowel name); short vowel words, onset and rime words (short vowels), long vowels (silent e); consonant digraphs (beginning and ending); consonant blends (beginning and ending); vowel digraphs (long vowel and other); vowel diphthongs; r- or l-controlled vowels; multisyllable words (closed and open syllables); 500 high frequency words in three lists (List A – 100 words; List B = 100 words; List C = 300 words)

C.  Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) Oral Reading Fluency Assessment

Current Oral Reading Fluency Norms for Grades 1-8 can be found at: www.edformation.com. Note: Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) norms are updated in the fall, winter, and spring of each school year.  They are from an electronic aggregation of all students using Edformation’s AIMSweb Benchmark Wed-based software and Edformation’s Standard Oral Reading Benchmark Passages.  Questions can be directed to Edformation, Inc., 6420 Flying Cloud Drive, Suite 204, Eden Prairie, MN 55344, Call 952-944-1882 or fax 952-944-1884.

II.  Literacy First Recommended Screening Instruments
(kindergarten – grade three)

Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST)
Literacy First Phonics Assessment
Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) Oral Reading Fluency Assessment

III.  Literacy First Benchmarks
(kindergarten – grade three)

A.  Literacy First Recommendations for Reading Sufficiency Plans

At the beginning of the school year, students should meet the following criteria or be considered for placement on a Reading Sufficiency Plan:

Kindergarten:

• Phonological Awareness: Distinguish between words that rhyme and words that do not rhyme, 5/6 or 6/6 pairs of words (see Phonological Awareness Skill Sequence Chart and Phonological Awareness Skills Test, Literacy First Primary Manual, Tab 2,)

First Grade:  

• Phonological Awareness: All pre-kindergarten skills plus 4 of 6 tested kindergarten skills (see Phonological Awareness Skills Sequence Chart and Phonological Awareness Skills Test, Literacy First Primary Manual, Tab 2)
• Phonics: 4 of 6 tested kindergarten skills (see Literacy First Phonics Developmental Continuum and Literacy First Phonics Assessment, Literacy First Primary Manual, Tab 3)

Second Grade:

• Phonological Awareness: All pre-kindergarten and kindergarten skills plus 3 of 4 tested first grade skills (see Phonological Awareness Skill Sequence Chart and Phonological Awareness Skills Test, Literacy First Primary Manual, Tab 2)
• Phonics: All kindergarten skills plus 7 of 10 tested first grade skills (see Literacy First Developmental Continuum and Literacy First Phonics Assessment, Literacy First Primary Manual, Tab 3)

Third Grade:

• Phonics: All kindergarten and first grade skills plus 4 of 6 second grade skills (see Literacy First Developmental Continuum and Literacy First Phonics Assessment, Literacy First Primary Manual, Tab 3)
• Fluency: Score on grade level on the CBM Oral Reading Fluency Assessment (see Oral Reading Fluency Assessment, Literacy First Primary Manual, Tab 7)

B.  “On Grade Level” Criteria as Measured by Literacy First Assessments

Click here for a summary of "On Grade Level Criteria."

IV.  Purchasing Literacy First Assessments

V.  Validity / Reliability Summary of Two
Literacy First Assessments

A.  Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST)

Reliability

For a test to be considered at least minimally reliable, its statistical reliability should approach or exceed .80 (Aiken, 1994).  All of the Phonological Awareness Skills Test measures exceeded the generally accepted cutoff of .80 (range = .84 - .95).  These values are similar to the .93 reliability estimate for the CTOPP Phonemic Elision task.  The overall reliability for the Phonological Awareness Skill Test tasks was .96.  In sum, the results indicate that the Phonological Awareness Skill Test battery showed excellent reliability for each subtest.

Validity

The external validity of the Phonological Awareness Skills Test tasks was determined via the criterion prediction validity procedure (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997).  Concurrent correlations between the Literacy First measures and the nationally standardized tasks were examined (see Table 4).  The correlations are concurrent because the tasks were measured during approximately the same time period.  The total Phonological Awareness Skill Test battery composite substantially correlated with the CTOPP Phoneme Elision task (i.e., r = .68).

The total Literacy First Phonological Awareness battery composite substantially correlated with the Woodcock Word Identification subtest (i.e., r = .71).

In sum, the results indicate that the Phonological Awareness Skills Test tasks show substantial evidence that the tasks have sufficient reliability and validity.

Reliability

Coefficient alphas and descriptive statistics are reported for the phonics assessments.  All tasks approached or exceeded the standard cutoff of .80.  Importantly, all Literacy First Phonics Assessment reading measures were substantially reliable, with coefficient alphas similar to that obtained for the standardized Woodcock Reading Mastery Word Identification task.

Validity

The external validity of the Literacy First tasks was determined via the criterion prediction validity procedure (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997).  All of the reading tasks of the Literacy First Phonics Assessment substantially correlated with the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - R/NU Word Identification task (at least .77).  Correlations were also obtained between the Word Identification test and each of the Literacy First Phonics Assessment categories for both real words and non-words.  The correlations between total correct for each category and Word Identification performance ranged from approximately .52 to .79.  Both the obtained reliability estimates and substantial correlations with Word Identification performance provide solid empirical evidence that the Literacy First Phonics Assessment reading tasks are valid measures of word-level reading.

VI.  Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM) Oral Reading Fluency Assessment

For Validity and Reliability information contact www.edformation.com.

Current Oral Reading Fluency Norms for Grades 1-8 can be found at: www.edformation.com. Note: Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) norms are updated in the fall, winter, and spring of each school year.  They are from an electronic aggregation of all students using Edformation’s AIMSweb Benchmark Wed-based software and Edformation’s Standard Oral Reading Benchmark Passages.  Questions can be directed to Edformation, Inc., 6420 Flying Cloud Drive, Suite 204, Eden Prairie, MN 55344, Call 952-944-1882 or fax 952-944-1884.