Examining growth patterns in Hawaiʻi's public school children's reading skill development, kindergarten through grade 3: a multilevel approach

Abstract

A convergence of evidence supports the notion that a growing number of students enter kindergarten significantly behind their more advantaged peers, and this disparity widens over time. Research demonstrates that the trajectory of reading growth is established early, and performance disparities between strong and weak readers are difficult to close. This early growth pattern is indicative of their future academic success and has important lifelong implications. Thus, early identification of children who are at-risk for reading difficulties is critical to student success. Statewide assessments lack the analytic power to measure growth and map developmental patterns on foundational reading skills. Thus, reliable measures and methods are essential to identify children's early literacy skill development across primary grades. This study examined Hawaiʻi students' developmental trajectories over four years on two Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Skills (DIBELS) measures, Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) and Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), designed to monitor acquisition of fundamental reading skills. It examined individual-and school-level factors that may influence students' acquisition of reading fluency, including the extent to which student demographic backgrounds contribute to inter-individual and intra-individual differences in initial status and whether differences increase or decrease in subsequent grades. The findings indicated that kindergartners demonstrated a wide disparity in initial reading skills, and these gaps persisted over time. Differences due to demographic backgrounds explained variability in students' acquisition of early reading skills more than differences in their school settings. The findings also showed that initial performance predicted rate of growth and that resultant growth patterns, whether cumulative or compensatory, generally differed in terms of the skill being assessed, student background, and students' initial score on a particular measure. The study's results imply that there is potential for earlier assessment and intervention in a systematic way to monitor students' literacy development during their initial educational years. The findings also support the utility of longitudinal analysis to examine the ways that students' demographic and literacy backgrounds and their school settings may interact with the consistency and validity of early reading assessments used in classrooms and schools to monitor their acquisition of fundamental reading skills.