Early Screening for Risk of Reading Disabilities: Recommendations for a Four-Step Screening System

Abstract

Response-to-intervention (RTI) models incorporate a screening process to identify students who appear to be at risk for learning disabilities (LDs). The purpose of this position article is to incorporate what is known about screening into a flexible, yet comprehensive screening system to help school psychologists and other school administrators in establishing school-specific screening procedures. The authors begin by discussing past research on screening for reading disabilities (RDs) within the RTI framework. Then, they propose a four-step screening system advocating a short screener (Step 1), progress monitoring (Step 2), follow-up testing (Step 3), and ongoing revision of procedures and cut scores (Step 4). Their goal is to improve screening within RTI systems with practical procedures to permit schools to implement state-of-the-art screening batteries that accurately and efficiently distinguish students who are at high risk for RD. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)