Reading Assessments

Kansas Reading Assessment:

KSDE General Assessment Homepage - the source for materials and updates related to all Kansas State Assessments.

Kansas Assessment Program provides information on assessments aligned with Common Core State Standards

Test preparation strategies:

• Teach the genre of Reading Assessment. Reading to take a standardized test is different from other types of reading. The purpose is to "Figure Out the Answers" to test makers’ questions. This requires additional reading strategies.
• Teach terminology and test language. Use the same language in the classroom that students will encounter on the test.
• Teach the reader, not the reading. Discuss HOW students arrived at their answers. Focus more on strategies, and less on answers.
• Teach students to look for evidence rom the text, to support their answers. “Use the text, not your life experience, to choose the answer.”
• Use (but don’t overuse) test practice materials to familiarize students with test format.

Attachments, links, and resources are listed below for screening, diagnostic, and progress monitoring assessments.

Web Links:

• AIMSWeb Progress Monitoring and RTI - A K-8 progress monitoring system based on direct, frequent and continuous student assessment. The results are reported to students, parents, teachers and administrators via a web-based data management and reporting system to determine response to intervention.
• Assessment Database from SEDL - A comprehensive database of criterion and norm-referenced reading assessments, including summary charts, feature comparisions, prices, and links to publishers.
• DIBELS - A screening tool that assesses the essential elements of reading K-6.
  • Grouping Students Worksheet
  • Analyzing a K-6 Student Booklet Worksheet (adapted from Susan Hall's book, "We've Dibel'd Now What")
• D.R.A. 2 - A diagnostic assessment tool for primary grades.
• Gray Diagnostic Reading Test 2 (GDRT 2)- has four core subtests: Letter/Word Identification, Phonetic Analysis, Reading Vocabulary, and Meaningful Reading. The three supplemental subtests--Listening Vocabulary, Rapid Naming, and Phonological Awareness--measure skills that play an important role in the diagnosis or teaching of developmental readers or children with dyslexia.
• Running Records - Give you accuracy, error, and self-correction rate as well as the type of errors the child is making.
• NWEA MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) Assessments - are state-aligned computerized adaptive tests that accurately reflect the instructional level of each student and measure growth over time (reading, math, and language usage).
• STEEP (iSTEEP)- System to Enhance Educational Performance is a comprehensive range of benchmark assessments, progress monitoring assessments, and a powerful web-based system for interpreting the data and making decisions. (K-12 assessments for reading, early literacy, reading comprehension, and math.) 

Phonological Awareness:

• PAST - A phonological awareness assessment found in the book, Sounds in Action.

Phonics:

• Quick Phonics Screener - A screener for grades K-6 to determine skill gaps in phonics.
• Really Great Reading: Really Great Reading provides four levels of diagnostic assessment.

Fluency:

• Gray Oral Reading Test 4 - -(GORT-4) provides an efficient and objective measure of growth in oral reading and an aid in the diagnosis of oral reading difficulties. Five scores give information on a student's oral reading skills in terms of rate, accuracy, fluency, comprehension, and overall reading ability.
• Reading A - Z Fluency Passages - Leveled passages for fluency rate.

Vocabulary:

Comprehension:

• Gray Oral Reading Test 4 -(GORT-4) provides an efficient and objective measure of growth in oral reading and an aid in the diagnosis of oral reading difficulties. Five scores give information on a student's oral reading skills in terms of rate, accuracy, fluency, comprehension, and overall reading ability.
• Gray Silent Reading Test - (GSRT) was developed to be used independently or as an adjunct to the Gray Oral Reading Test-4th Ed. (GORT 4). The GSRT helps you quickly and efficiently measure an individual's silent reading comprehension ability.
• Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI)- An assessment for comprehension based on sentence structure and vocabulary for all levels.
• STAR Test - A cloze reading assessment. It will give a grade equivalent level, instructional reading level, and zone of proximal development.