A Comparison of Reading Screeners in Kindergarten: The Texas Primary Reading Inventory and Acadience Reading With English Learners and Monolingual English Speakers

Measuring and identifying risk for reading difficulties at the kindergarten level is necessary for providing intervention as early as possible. The purpose of this study was to examine concurrent validity evidence of two kindergarten reading screeners, Acadience Reading and Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI), as well as diagnostic accuracy at different performance levels on the Woodcock-Johnson IV (WJ-IV) Reading Cluster and across (n = 96) emergent bilingual and monolingual English learners in kindergarten. Findings indicated moderate correlations between Acadience Reading and TPRI with the WJ-IV. Diagnostic accuracy results showed screening measures were inadequate when predicting WJ IV performance above 90 SS (standard score), but results improved for almost all measures and student groups when the threshold for performance was lowered to 80 SS. Acadience Reading Below Benchmark (AR BB) offered the lowest overall accuracy for emerging bilingual (EB) students. Implications for efficient and accurate use of reading screeners in schools are discussed.