assessment and Essentials of, Assessing, Preventing and Overcoming Reading Difficulties

This is my third entry about this text.

David A. Kilpatrick's Book, Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, contains four chapters on assessment. Through the window of identifying the root of a reading problem, rather than identifying students for special ed services, the school psychologist examines commercially available assessments in their usefulness for pinpointing challenges so that interventions can be specific to the child.

All too often in my professional career, I have seen RTI or MTSS interventions that are one size fits all. We offer Read 180, or Wilson, or Reading Recovery for all our kids who need a Tier 2 intervention. None of these programs are bad, they just may not address the root of the problem. I was in one school where the MTSS for all students in social and behavioral realms was the same. If they struggled with using appropriate language in class, arriving to class on time, coming to school or completing in class assignments, the same data was collected and intervention was implemented. Oddly enough, this was not effective at changing behavior. The same is true with our struggling readers. They need interventions that are tied to their individual needs.

Kilpatrick sees the need for intervention in the bottom third of the student body (approximately one third of students do not read at grade level). This means that many low average scores should be addressed in spite of the identifier of average in their description. He looks at readers as falling into one of five categories as represented below.

		Language comprehension
		strong	weak
Word reading	strong	Typical	Hyperlexic (students who can read the words but do not know what they mean
	weak	Dyslexic or compensator (late emerging poor readers for whom reading comprehension is greater than 1 standard deviation below verbal skills- timed phonemic awareness and word attack skills are low)	mixed

Of note is his identification of compensators and hyperlexics who may not initially be seen as poor readers or those that are poor readers relative to their other patterns of skills, particularly on timed assessments.

Kilpatrick  describes the subtests or whole tests that can be used to pinpoint the problem area. For measures other than reading comprehension, he recommends that at least two different tests that measure the same skill be administered so that reliability and validity can be assured. One measure that he does recommend is the PAST test. which is available for free, has multiple forms, is quick to administer and reveals student understanding of basic and advanced phonemic awareness skills. It can be found here.

In these four chapters, he develops a differential for reading difficulties. The first chart describes word level reading problems and the second, comprehension challenges.

word level concerns

Nonsense words	Timed words	Untimed words	Phonemic awareness	hypothesis	Reading pattern difficulty	Potential action
w	w	w	w	Limited phonics skills and sight word vocabulary due to phonological-core deficit	Dyslexic or mixed	Train phonemic awareness and phonics skill
w	w	a	w	Limited sight vocabulary due to phonological-core deficit	Compensator or mild dyslexic	Train phonemic awareness and phonics skill
w	w	w/a	w	Incomplete phonological awareness skills; has enough for phonic decoding but not enough for efficient sight word acquisition	Mild dyslexic	Train more advanced phonemic awareness skills and increase exposure to readable connected text
a	w/a	w	a	Inadequate instruction or experience	Reading problem not likely	Improved instruction and greater reading opportunities
w	a	a	a	Inadequate phonics instruction	Reading problem not likely	Additional phonics instruction to prevent limitation in reading program
a	a	a	a	Any word reading difficulties likely due to attentional, motivational, or anxiety issues	Reading problem not likely	Further investigation of attentional, motivational and anxiety issues

w=weak               a=average                           source: Kilpatrick (2015) p 211-212

Comprehension level concerns

Listening comprehension (LC)	Reading comprehension	Verbal IQ score	hypothesis	Reading difficulty pattern	Potential action
w	w	w	General language skills are hindering reading comprehension	Hyperlexic or mixed	Develop language skills; address word level reading skills in students with mixed pattern
w	a+	a+	Poor listening comprehension skills relative to general language skills	Possible attentional or anxiety issues	Address attentional or anxiety issues
a+	Much lower than LC	a+	Word recognition skills are likely effortful and drawing attention from reading comprehension	Dyslexic or compensator	Address word level reading skills

 w=weak              a=average           a+= average or better                    source: Kilpatrick (2015) p 234


Once the probable concern is identified, interventions can be planned. That is the next portion of the book...