Should Children Be Assessed Individually as They Learn to Read?

Reading Kingdom founder Dr. Marion Blank is happy to answer your questions about how children develop and learn to read.

Today’s question comes from Betsie (education enthusiast).  Betsie asks:

What are your thoughts on assessing students’ reading ability individually? 

Dr. Marion Blank Answers:

It is essential that each child’s abilities be assessed individually. It saves children who are advanced from being bored by having to redo material they already know and it saves children who are having difficulty from struggling with material beyond their level. The good news is that using computers assessing students is now far easier than it used to be. For example, in typical reading instruction, there are hundreds of difficult and confusing “rules” to be mastered. Assessment of a child’s grasp of those rules is time consuming and unnecessary.  By contrast, using computers it is possible to organize the material according to levels of difficulty and the appropriate level of instruction is one where the child is basically proficient and encounters between 10-15% error. Once that level is identified, the assessment ends. With material that is well designed, this sort of assessment takes between 10 and 30 minutes. This is how our program, Reading Kingdom, is designed.”