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The purpose of this study was to determine the relation between word recognition errors made at a letter-sound pattern level on a word list and on a curriculum-based measurement oral reading fluency measure (CBM-ORF) for typical and struggling elementary readers. The participants were second, third, and fourth grade typical and struggling readers (n = 69) who were systematically sampled from a pool of 265 students participating in a larger study. Participants read a nonsense word list composed of 599 words across 89 letter-sound patterns and three CBM-ORF passages. Pearson product-moment (Pearson "r") correlation coefficients indicate students' recognition of letter-sound patterns on word list and CBM-ORF differs between patterns as well as between type of reader. Results are discussed in terms of usefulness for CBM-ORF to assess letter-sound pattern recognition skills of typical and struggling elementary readers. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)

This study examines the relation between decoding and spelling performance on tasks that represent identical specific grapho-phonemic patterns. Elementary students (N = 206) were administered a 597 pseudoword decoding inventory representing 12 specific grapho-phonemic patterns and a 104 real-word spelling inventory representing identical grapho-phonemic patterns presented on the decoding inventory. Correlational and quantile regression analyses revealed a moderate to strong correlation between student performance in decoding and spelling tasks, with stronger relations found among more complex grapho-phonemic patterns and weaker relations found among less complex grapho-phonemic patterns. The results of this study support the utility of a spelling assessment with items representing a wide range of grapho-phonemic patterns as a screener for specific areas of grapho-phonemic knowledge weakness and provide educators with an efficient method of collecting the data needed to develop targeted interventions. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

This article provides a summary of the five years of implementation of the first cohort of schools participating in Utah's Reading First Initiative. Fifteen schools across six districts comprised this cohort. Performance is compared to the performance of a cohort of matched comparison schools as well as the average state performance on the Utah Language Arts Criterion-referenced Tests (CRTs). Results indicate that Reading First schools appeared to have made greater gains than comparison schools or the state average in the percentage of students achieving proficiency on the CRTs. In addition, the achievement gap for most disaggregated groups was reduced, and greater performance was noted for students who spent three years in Reading First schools rather than one or two. These data are in contrast to the results of the Reading First Impact Study, but highlight the need to examine the contextual effects of systemic reform initiatives such as the Reading First Initiative. (Contains 3 tables, 6 figures, and 2 notes.)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between different text-leveling systems and reading accuracy and fluency in second-grade students with and without decoding difficulties. Two-hundred-forty-eight second-grade students, 44 identified as low achieving (LA) and 204 identified as average achieving (AA) in decoding skill, participated in the 15-week study. During the study teachers collected data weekly on students' text-reading accuracy and fluency using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) techniques. Text attributes such as readability, decodability, percentage of high frequency words, average words per sentence, and percentage of multisyllabic words were estimated for each passage. Results using the entire sample of children indicated that accuracy of text reading was uniquely predicted by the percentage of high frequency words in the passages, whereas both the percentage of high frequency words and passage decodability made unique contributions to variance in passage-reading fluency. Moreover, results suggested that the relationship between text-leveling variables and reading performance was similar in the LA and AA groups, with only a slight trend favoring a stronger relationship between passage decodability and measures of text-reading performance in the AA group compared to the LA group.