Administration Manual pages: 58-61
The Multitudes universal screener predicts whether or not a child is at risk of having reading difficulties. In doing so, it provides valuable insight into a child's current skills and knowledge. By analyzing screening results, educators can form well-supported ideas about a child’s areas of strength and need. Please note that screening alone does not identify the causes of reading difficulties.
This section is all about interpreting a child’s results. But once you interpret results, it’s time to take next steps! See Chapter 4: Resources and Next Steps for information about instruction and intervention.
| Look for Areas of Strength + Need |
A child’s receives results for every task they completed, and these tasks are grouped by domain. This helps educators clearly see in which areas the child is doing well and where they may need extra help. For example:
- If a child’s score on a task in the domain of Phonological Awareness is below the 20th percentile, the child needs support in that domain.
- If a child’s
Look at the task results all together. For example, results might show relatively strong phonological awareness but relatively weak processing speed – or stronger language skills and weaker alphabetic knowledge. Recognizing strengths, weaknesses, and patterns can help guide further assessment, intervention, and accommodations.
| Contextualize Results in the Bigger Data Story |
Screening data is one piece of a child’s overall data story. Results provide a snapshot of a child's reading skills at a specific point in time. To create a complete picture, screener data should be combined with other sources of information. By combining different types of information, educators can better understand a child’s reading skills, strengths, and areas for improvement. This will ultimately help inform targeted and effective instructional strategies.
Information Sources
| SOURCE | DESCRIPTION |
| Classroom observations | Educators’ observations of a child’s reading behavior, engagement, and performance during classroom activities. |
| Formative Assessment | Assessments, including reading inventories and curriculum-based measures, can provide detailed, up-to-date information about a child’s current reading skills. |
| Standardized assessment scores | Results from other standardized tests, such as state or district-wide assessments, may help provide a longitudinal perspective on a child’s reading skill development over time. |
| English language proficiency assessments | For multilingual learners learning in English, assessment of English proficiency levels can help contextualize reading abilities and identify potential language support needs. |
| Oral language samples | Evaluating verbal communication skills can provide insight into ability to comprehend and produce spoken language as well as vocabulary knowledge. It is especially important to take this information into account when assessing the early literacy skills of multilingual children. |
| Parent / caregiver input | Teachers may consider asking parents/caregivers for information about their child’s learning background, language development and use, and behavior at home. |
| Special education evaluations + reports | For children receiving special education services, evaluations from specialists like psychologists or reading specialists, can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the child’s cognitive, academic, and behavioral needs. |
| Speech and language evaluations | For children with suspected speech or language difficulties, assessments from speech-language pathologists can shed light on factors that may impact reading development. |
Other pieces of a child’s data story may even affect a child’s performance on the screener itself. For example, a child might have limited experience taking this type of assessment, or there could be factors like noise, illness, or fatigue that influence how a child performs on the day of screening. Here are some important questions to consider when interpreting results:
- Has the child had limited educational experience in a school setting?
- Was the child feeling unwell, tired, or hungry at the time of screening?
- Were the testing conditions, like the environment, not ideal?
- Is the child unfamiliar with taking assessments?
- Does the child have experience with the device they used to take the assessment?
- Is the child newly acquiring the language of the screener and/or receiving limited instruction in that language, despite determining that the child had sufficient language proficiency to participate in screening?
- Could emotional or psychological factors be affecting the child’s performance?
- Are the results surprising based on what we know about this child?
If any of these factors apply, it’s important to interpret the child’s results carefully and in combination with other data.
Lastly, while Multitudes has been carefully designed and rigorously evaluated, no assessment tool is perfect. Educational decisions should not be based on the results of just one test.
| Compare Performance Across Languages |
When children are acquiring both Spanish and English, whether in and/or outside of school, we strongly recommend that they be screened in both languages. This will provide the most authentic, accurate picture of a child’s overall language, pre-literacy, and literacy skills.
For example, a child whose native language is Spanish may be receiving reading instruction at school in English. We recommend they be screened in both Spanish and English. Then, the following results scenarios might occur:
- On target in Spanish and Support needed in English: It is likely that the child’s English language skills are still developing, which may affect their results in that language. The child is probably not at risk for reading difficulties but needs more time and support to develop their English language proficiency.
- Support needed in both languages: The child may be at risk for reading difficulties. Further assessment is required to understand the child’s strengths and areas of across the domains assessed by the Multitudes screener.
- On target in both languages: The child likely has adequate language and early literacy skills in both English and Spanish, at this time.