Predictive Validity of Kindergarten Progress Monitoring Measures Across the School Year: Application of Dominance Analysis

Abstract

Although several measures are available for monitoring kindergarten reading progress, little research has directly compared them to determine which are superior in predicting year-end reading skills relative to other measures, and how validity may change across the school year as reading skills develop. A sample of 426 kindergarten students who were considered to be at risk for reading difficulty at the start of kindergarten were monitored across the year with a set of paper-based progress monitoring measures and a computer-adaptive test. Dominance analyses were used to determine the extent to which each measure uniquely predicted year-end reading skills relative to other measures. Although the computer-adaptive test was the most dominant predictor at the start of the year over letter sound fluency, letter naming fluency, and phoneme segmentation fluency, letter sound fluency was most dominant by December. Measures of fluency reading real words administered across the second half of the year were dominant to all other assessments. The implications for measure selection are discussed.

Patterns of early literacy and word reading skill development across the first 6 months of school and reading instruction.

“…If a child read all 50 words in under a minute, their score was prorated. Previous WIF research with children in U.S. kindergarten showed word reading skills at mid year (Clemens et al, 2019) and growth in word reading in the latter half of the year (Clemens et al, 2018) predicted year-end reading skills.…”

“…This growth was the fastest between Reception Terms 2 and 3 (winter to spring), with word reading predicted by, and reciprocally related to, phonemic awareness and grapheme–phoneme knowledge (Clayton et al, 2020). Moreover, research with U.S. children has indicated that word reading growth in the second half of their kindergarten year is predictive of literacy skills at year end (Clemens et al, 2018, 2019). To date, however, research examining word reading acquisition in very nascent readers is just beginning to emerge (T.…”

School-entry skills and early skill trajectories predict reading after 1 year.

“…Path analysis assumptions were checked; all parameters were continuous and normally distributed. Multicollinearity between NZWIF-Y1 mLCS and LSF mLCS ( r = .85) would result in the dominant variable subsuming effects of the other (Barbeau et al, 2019; Clemens et al, 2019). Therefore, separate path analysis models were undertaken modeling contributions of (a) onset phoneme awareness (FSF mLCS ) and letter-sound correspondence (LSF mLCS ) with school-entry skills and (b) onset phoneme awareness (FSF mLCS ) and word reading (NZWIF-Y1 mLCS ) with school-entry skills.…”

The Differential Importance of Component Skills on Reading Comprehension Test Performance Among Struggling Adolescent Readers

“…Dominance analysis involves testing all possible combinations of predictors in separate regression models (i.e., subset models) to reveal the additional contribution of each predictor relative to other predictors under study. Dominance analysis has been used in several studies to identify the skills or measures that are most important in predicting reading skills on a concurrent or longitudinal basis (e.g., Clemens et al, 2019; Fuchs et al, 2004; Mellard et al, 2012; Schatschneider et al, 2004; Tighe & Schatschneider, 2014). However, dominance analysis has not been used to investigate the extent to which component reading skills and knowledge sources differentially predict performance across different tests of reading comprehension.…”