Assessing Foundational Reading Skills in Kindergarten: A Curriculum-Based Measurement in Spanish

Abstract

Early identification of learning difficulties is a critical component of the Response to Intervention (RtI) model. In kindergarten, the screening of foundational reading skills can provide a data-based guideline for identifying students requiring a more intensive response-based intervention before starting elementary school. This study examines the classification accuracy and best predictors of a set of Spanish curriculum-based measures administered during kindergarten. The study’s sample included 189 students tested in the fall, winter, and spring. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was conducted. The composite score of the curriculum-based measurement (CBM) revealed area under the ROC curve (AUC) values of 0.83, 0.97, and 0.94 in the fall, winter, and spring, respectively. Phonemic awareness and letter-sound knowledge were the only isolated measures that demonstrated excellent AUC values throughout kindergarten. Logistic regression models showed that, when entered simultaneously, all measures were significant predictors of reading risk at some moment of the school year.

Predicting performance on a statewide reading achievement test in Spanish with aimswebPlus Spanish

“…Incorporating additional measures of skills that predict Spanish reading comprehension into the aimswebPlus Spanish reading composite may improve the diagnostic accuracy when predicting student performance on SLA tests. For example, Gutierrez et al (2020) found that decisions made based on a composite score from multiple Spanish early literacy CBMs improved the diagnostic accuracy associated with the measures when predicting reading competency in kindergarten students.…”

“…Second, we were unable to obtain information regarding the creation of the aimswebPlus Spanish measures from the test developer. Spanish is a syllable‐timed language with a transparent orthography (Gutierrez et al, 2020) and it is unclear whether the aimswebPlus passages were developed to represent that orthography or if they were based on a model of English reading development. If this type of information were available, it would be easier to evaluate the argument that aimswebPlus Spanish CBM‐R performance generalizes to students' Spanish oral reading fluency.…”

“…Beyond evidence supporting the extrapolation inference that Spanish CBM‐R scores are an indicator of Spanish Reading achievement, demonstrating the utility of any academic screening tool requires evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of decisions made based on the screening outcomes (Christ & Nelson, 2014; Jenkins et al, 2007). There is evidence that Spanish CBMs of foundational reading skills can accurately predict reading competence in kindergarten students (Gutierrez et al, 2020). However, these findings may have limited generalizability to the use of CBM‐R to predict SLA performance with upper elementary students.…”

Relation Between the Essential Components of Reading and Reading Comprehension in Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children: a Meta-analysis

“…The effect size of the relation between vocabulary and reading comprehension was medium and significant among students ages 6-8 (r = 0.31; k = 9) and 9-12 (r = 0.44; k = 11). We found only one study that examined the relation between vocabulary and reading comprehension for children ages 5-6 (Gutiérrez et al, 2020).…”

Detecting reading difficulties in Spanish in older elementary students in the context of the Response to Intervention model

“…On the one hand, there are those who may have experienced RD from the beginning of their academic life, who are detected through early evaluation and who, due to this, can count on timely intervention. In this regard, a larger number of studies are usually found that show great advances (Al‐Otaiba et al, 2011; Catts et al, 2015; Gutiérrez et al, 2020; Speece et al, 2011). Despite progress, at least one group of students is routinely missed in this identification process.…”