Screening for Reading Risk: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

An overview of what it means to screen for reading risk, including why it is important, what a screening assessment should include, how to select a screening assessment, and next steps.

Screening is a short process to find students who need help in reading, writing, spelling, or math.

There is broad agreement that schools should implement early screening programs.

For reading, universal screening should be administered to all students in kindergarten, first, and second grades. It should take place at least annually to assess risk for dyslexia and other reading disabilities.

Why Is Screening for Reading Risk Important?

Screening helps capture each child’s reading and language strengths and weaknesses in key early stages of development.

Screening helps catch students who are in need of extra support early on.

It is the first step to providing direct, explicit instruction and intervention to improve lifelong learning trajectories of learners.

Screening assessments should be:

• Brief

• Easy to administer

• Valid and reliable

• Timely and informative

What Should a Screening Assessment Include?

Screening for reading risk appears to be most successful when the following specific skills are assessed at each grade level:

• Kindergarten: Phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, letter-sound association, and phonological memory tasks.

• First Grade: Phoneme awareness and segmentation, letter manipulation, nonword repetition, oral vocabulary, word recognition, and fluency tasks.

• Second Grade and Up: Word identification, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension tasks.

How do you select a screening assessment?

There are many things to consider when selecting a screener. It is important that the screener is designed for a population of students that matches your needs.

It is also critical that the content measured is aligned with the outcome you are interested in identifying. Screening assessments should meet certain statistical considerations. They should be reliable and valid.

They should accurately classify students who are at risk and not at risk for poor outcomes.

The National Center on Intensive Intervention has created Tools Charts to provide ratings on the technical rigor of different screening tools. This information can be very useful as you are comparing screeners and deciding which one best meets your needs.

What Are the Next Steps After Screening?

Screening for reading risk is the first step to supporting students who are at risk for poor reading outcomes. The data collected from screening assessments should be used as part of a decision-making framework that answers several fundamental questions, including:

Is the student at risk for dyslexia or not meeting pre-reading or reading goals expected for the grade level?

• Is the student making enough reading progress to read proficiently?

• Is the student reading with sufficient proficiency to meet grade level reading expectations?

• For students not making adequate progress despite intervention, what additional intervention approaches have the best chance to improve the rate of progress?

Suggested Citation:

National Center on Improving Literacy. (2025). Screening for Reading Risk: What Is It and Why Is It Important? Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs. Retrieved from improvingliteracy.org.