Assessment for Effective Intervention

Assessment is at the center of a response to intervention (RTI) framework. As a preventive service delivery model, the early identification of students who are at risk for future read-ing failure is the key to appropriately placing them into inter-ventions. Thus, universal screening is a critical first step in most RTI models (Jenkins, Hudson, & Johnson, 2007). Effec-tive screening measures are typified by brevity and ease of use, and they should demonstrate high accuracy in predicting whether students will succeed on a criterion outcome of interest (e.g., standardized reading assessment, state achieve-ment test). When scores from screening assessments are vali-dated, they are typically designed to maximize a particular statistical outcome (Streiner, 2003; e.g., correct classification according to a gold standard outcome, thereby reducing the number of underidentified students). Thus, it is imperative that educators and researchers are informed about the trade-offs of maximizing different outcomes. This article discusses the important statistical and methodological components that should be considered when choosing a screening assessment, and it highlights such considerations with an illustratio