Screening is defined as a universal measure administered to all students by qualified personnel to determine which students are at risk for dyslexia or reading difficulties and/or a related disorder. Screening is not a formal evaluation.
The International Dyslexia Association (2017) describes screening instruments as follows:
Screening measures, by definition, are typically brief assessments of a skill or ability that is highly predictive of a later outcome. Screening measures are designed to quickly differentiate students into one of two groups: 1) those who require intervention and 2) those who do not. A screening measure needs to focus on specific skills that are highly correlated with broader measures of reading achievement resulting in a highly accurate sorting of students.
-International Dyslexia Association, Universal Screening: K-2 Reading, 2017
Early identification of students with dyslexia along with corresponding early intervention programs for these students will have significant implications for their future academic success.
Early identification is critical because the earlier the intervention, the easier it is to remediate.
Inexpensive screening measures identify at-risk children in mid-kindergarten with 85% accuracy.
If intervention is not provided before the age of eight, the probability of reading difficulties continuing into high school is 75% (pp. 279-280).
-Straight Talk about Reading, Hall and Moats (1999)
In 2017, the 85th Texas Legislature passed House Bill (HB) 1886, amending Texas Education Code (TEC) §38.003, Screening and Treatment for Dyslexia, to require that all kindergarten and first grade public school students be screened for dyslexia and related disorders.
The MISD testing window for first grade opens January 4, 2023 and closes January 31, 2023, and the testing window for kindergarten will be open April 12, 2023 and close May 26, 2023.
Independent of the type of assessment a district selects to use, there are requirements of critical skills shown to underlie dyslexia risk that the screening must encompass:
Letter Sounds Knowledge or Letter Naming Fluency
Phonological Awareness - the ability to recognize and manipulate the sound structure of language
Word Reading Accuracy or Fluency - the ability to fluently and accurately read words using sound-symbol correspondences and sight word recognition
Mabank ISD utilizes the mCLASS DIBELS 8th Edition with subtests for dyslexia as the screener for all kindergarten and first grade students. DIBELS 8th Edition introduces Word Reading Fluency (WRF), a measure of word reading ability, and includes revised versions of the Letter Naming Fluency (LNF), Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF), and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) subtests to improve the ability to screen for deficits commonly associated with dyslexia risk, such as phonological awareness, rapid naming ability, and alphabetic principle. mCLASS further incorporates these subtests and provides additional measures in vocabulary, spelling, and rapid automatized naming. (2019, Amplify Education, Inc.)