3/30/2020

Getting Ahead of ACAP: How Assessment Without Testing Helps Identify Struggling Readers Early

The Alabama Literacy Act (ALA) mandates that third graders who are not reading at grade level according to state ACAP results be held back. With less than 50% of students reaching proficiency levels in English language arts, educators are under immense pressure to identify struggling readers early and provide effective interventions, despite limited resources. 

Lexia® Core5® Reading supports educators in providing effective literacy instruction for students of all abilities in grades pre-K–5. Lexia’s research-proven program provides explicit, systematic, personalized learning in the six areas of reading instruction, targeting skill gaps as they emerge, and providing teachers with the data and student-specific resources they need to guide individual and small-group instruction. 

Assessment Without Testing® 

Core5 can serve not only as a key component to a school’s literacy curriculum, but also as an important tool for educators who want to predict the probability that their students will meet state-mandated benchmarks. As students work independently within the program, real-time performance data is collected through Lexia’s patented embedded assessment tool, Assessment Without Testing®. This assessment tool monitors the development of students’ reading skills and provides educators with ongoing reports on their progress. 

All of this data is collected without a formal test event, and can be easily viewed by administrators and educators via myLexia.com to see first-hand how Core5 is benefitting their students. Within the myLexia reports, a data-driven action plan is provided to take the guesswork out of differentiating instruction for each student. These reports help educators focus their attention on students who need additional instruction so that all students reach end-of-year benchmarks. The online platform also allows administrators and educators to generate reports at the class, grade, school, and district levels. 

Strongly Correlated to Commonly Used Assessments

Predictor scores and Benchmark status from Core5 are strongly correlated with scores from commonly used assessments. On Target Predictor scores were used to predict proficiency on the STAR, MAP?, DIBELS Next, and AIMSweb? assessments with more than 80% accuracy. These findings indicate that Core5 can serve not only as an instruction program but as a key component in a school's literacy assessment.

WIDA PRIME V2 Correlation

Core5 has been recognized by WIDA as satisfying all 44 criteria under the WIDA PRIME V2 Correlation for English Language Development Standards. This designation provides further credibility for Lexia’s research-proven instructional program, which is currently used by more than 2.6 million students, and has been shown to help ELL students close the academic gap.

This correlation highlights the important ways in which Core5 helps language learners develop English literacy skills. Specific examples in the correlation note that Core5:

• Builds academic language at the discourse, sentence, and word/phrase level

• Connects language development standards to state academic content standards

• Challenges all learners at all levels of language proficiency

• Provides scaffolding supports for students to advance

Alignment to the Alabama Course of Study 

Core5 aligns with the Alabama Course of Study for ELA, Grades K–5, including foundational skills, literature, informational text, and language.  Additionally, Core5's embedded assessment provides actionable, real-time data to drive instructional decisions and monitor progress towards benchmarks and goals. 

• Systematically presents content and skills identified as essential for developing reading skills

• Emphasis on foundational reading skills is complemented by activities designed to develop automaticity and fluency

• Provides varied, ongoing opportunities to interact with complex text to develop listening and reading comprehension

• Focuses on the development of academic and domain-specific vocabulary to improve comprehension, including more advanced structural analysis skills  

• Integrates both narrative and informational text into activities to build comprehension

• Provides students with exposure to various genres and types of text structure

The Results Are In

When used with fidelity, Core5 is proven to close the literacy gap. Of the approximately 898,000 students in grades K–5 who used Core5 with fidelity during the 2018–19 school year, almost all made substantial progress:

• The percentage of students working at or above grade level at the end-of-year increased to 91% from 50%

• The percentage of students working below grade level declined from 50% to 9%

Alabama students also made in Lexia Core5 Reading.

• The percentage of students working at or above grade level by the end of year increased to 85% from 43%

• The percentage of students working below grade level declined from 58% to 15%

Supporting Teachers 

In states like Alabama, where stricter laws increase demands on teachers and leaders without a corresponding increase in funding, educators can rely on professional learning courses through Lexia Academy.

After working with thousands of schools across the United States, we've learned that implementations get the best results when administrators, teachers, and students receive the best ongoing support. 

Implementing a new program can be complex, but with Lexia Implementation Services you are fully supported from day one, making the process as seamless as possible. From technical set-up guidance and on-site training, to organizing, scheduling, and delivering web-based professional learning sessions, we set you up for success. Online, self-paced training courses in areas like the Science of Reading and Structured Literacy and give teachers the extra boost of confidence they need to meet the demands of the new law. 

It’s projected that as many as 10,000 third grade students in Alabama could be held back when the 2020-21 testing results come in. With Lexia, you can accelerate reading growth for all of your students and prevent the retention of your struggling readers without having to wait for ACAP results.