Abstract
Early and accurate identification of children at risk for reading difficulty is essential to prevent long-term academic failure, yet traditional static assessments often struggle to distinguish between a true reading disorder and a lack of prior instruction. This is particularly evident in the early grades, where floor effects and cultural/linguistic biases limit the classification accuracy of traditional screeners. This study investigated the predictive validity and structural utility of the modifiability index of a dynamic assessment (DA) of decoding, administered in kindergarten. Unlike static measures that evaluate "already actualized" knowledge, DA measures a student's learning potential and modifiability, or the capacity to learn something new within the context of instruction. However, critics of DA often dismiss its utility due to subjectivity in DA's creation, administration, and scoring procedures. A DA of decoding has recently been developed and is both standardized and norm-referenced, effectively addressing these concerns. This study evaluated only the most subjective component of the DA, the learning scale of the Modifiability Index. In an effort to provide information about a norm-referenced, standardized DA's psychometric properties, this study addressed three primary research questions: (1) how well the dynamic assessment's modifiability index correlates with elementary literacy outcomes; (2) what is the specific sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of the modifiability index for identifying reading risk, and (3) how much variability does the modifiability index of the DA account for in the presence of kindergarten letter naming fluency on overall reading outcomes.
Degree
PhD
College and Department
David O. McKay School of Education; Educational Inquiry, Measurement, and Evaluation
Rights
https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Bakula, Bridgett, "Beyond Static Measures: The Predictive Validity and Classification Accuracy of a Dynamic Assessment of Decoding for Early Elementary" (2026). Theses and Dissertations. 11390.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/11390
Date Submitted
2026-07-14
Document Type
Dissertation
Keywords
dynamic assessment, word recognition, decoding, early literacy, modifiability, Response to Intervention (RTI), predictive validity, areas under the curve (AUC), receiver operating characteristic (ROC), sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV)
Language
english