A note on understanding assessments that assess reading comprehension: 

• While many assessments claim to assess reading comprehension, it must be noted that these assessments assess different aspects of reading comprehension since it is a multifaceted, cognitively complex skill that humans do when reading text. Consider, for example, our current screener, HMH Growth Measure. While it assesses certain pieces of reading comprehension, namely in the Reading and Language domains, these are only two areas that are assessed to give educators, administrators, and parents an understanding that students who may be low in these areas may have issues with reading and will need further diagnostic testing to determine where gaps may be in their reading development.

• Consider the following graphic that shows the simple view of reading: Students need a lot more skills than just understanding vocabulary to comprehend a text (especially complex texts that adolescent students are exposed to in their secondary content areas). So, in closing, when we assess reading comprehension, we also need to consider that all pieces of comprehension are not assessed in one assessment, nor are they meant to be when it comes to a universal screener. (*Universal screening involves assessing all students with a measure to determine whether additional support is needed to reach proficiency in that skill or subset of skills.)