This study evaluated the validity of a new scale for assessing children's reading fluency skill called the Comprehensive Oral Reading Fluency Scale (CORFS). The CORFS consists of two subscales that capture key elements of the Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, and Meisinger (2010) definition of reading fluency: reading expression, reading rate, and accuracy. In study 1, the reading expression subscale was developed by examining spectrographically measured prosodic differences in the oral readings of children with varying fluency skill. Three experts independently rated the oral readings of 59 second‐grade children using the CORFS. Intraclass correlations among raters were strong for both reading expression, and reading rate and accuracy. Expression ratings correlated with all but one spectrographic indicator of reading prosody and highly with standardized assessments of reading fluency and comprehension. In study 2, the structure of the scale was replicated using spectrographic measures of the oral readings of 60 third‐grade children reading two new texts. Two experts independently rated these oral readings using a final version of the scale. Results were comparable to those of study 1. Together, these results support the validity of the CORFS as an assessment of reading fluency.

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Phonological awareness is assessed in various ways in both research studies and early childhood classrooms. The measures used to assess phonological awareness are related closely, although they differ in the linguistic unit used (e.g., word, syllable, onset-rime, or phoneme), the position of the linguistic unit (e.g., initial, medial, final), the task operation (e.g., detection, segmentation, deletion, production), the response mode (e.g., verbal, nonverbal), the task support or demands (e.g., picture prompts or memory demands), and in words used (low vs. high age of acquisition). To understand phonological awareness assessments better, phonological awareness tasks used with young children were examined based on these variations. The results indicate that considerable variability exists in the cognitive demands on phonological awareness assessments used in early childhood settings. These results raise some important questions regarding how phonological awareness is assessed in early childhood. Moreover, variations in response format and task support/demand are likely to increase or decrease the complexity of the tasks, which could have implications for classroom instruction and intervention.

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