Validity and Diagnostic Accuracy of Early Written Expression Screeners in Kindergarten

Many students struggle with the basic skill of writing, yet schools lack technically adequate screening measures to identify students at risk in this area. Measures that allow for valid screening decisions that identify students in need of interventions to improve performance are greatly needed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity and diagnostic accuracy of early writing screeners. Two early writing screening measures, Picture Word and Word Dictation, were administered to a diverse sample of 95 kindergarten students, almost half of whom were classified as English language learners and almost 70% identified ethnically as Hispanic. It was hypothesized that the early writing screening measures would demonstrate moderate to strong relationships with a standardized norm-referenced measure of written expression and adequate diagnostic accuracy for identifying kindergarten students at risk. Findings indicate that concurrent validity coefficients for both Picture Word and Word Dictation tasks ranged from .32 to .70 with the Written Expression cluster of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement-IV and .26 to .61 with the Writing Samples and Sentence Writing Fluency subtests. Diagnostic accuracy results suggest these measures are a promising option for screening early writing skills. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.