EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN AT RISK FOR READING DISABILITIES

The present study examined the development of phonological and reading skills in 171 students (98 males, 73 females) from the beginning of f irst grade (Time 1) to the end of second grade (Time 4). Based on thei r reading and intelligence scores at the end of second grade, these st udents were placed into nondisabled (ND), reading disabled (RD), or ga rden-variety poor reading (GV) groups. Although each group made gains in phonological processing, large differences were found between the N D and RD/GV groups. The RD and GV groups performed similarly on many o f the tasks. Consistent with the literature, it was found that intelli gence does not differentiate between good and poor readers. The most i mportant finding of the present study was that reader-group membership at Time 4 could be very accurately determined from students' Time 1 s cores. All of the children in the RD and GV groups were correctly iden tified, and only 3 of the 148 ND children were misclassified, indicati ng that children at risk for reading difficulties can be very accurate ly identified very early in their academic experiences.