| Past research has demonstrated that teachers are able to make accurate judgments of students' academic achievement. Limited research, however, has examined the accuracy of teacher judgments regarding students' early literacy skills. Due to the importance of preventing reading difficulties in children, teacher judgments could be used as a cost-effective screening tool for identifying children at-risk for developing future reading problems. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the accuracy of teacher judgments of students' early literacy skills, and to determine if student achievement level influenced teacher judgment accuracy. Higher- and lower-achieving kindergarten and first grade students were assessed using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Nonsense Word Fluency and Phoneme Segmentation Fluency measures. Teachers then predicted their respective students' performance on the two DIBELS measures. Results indicated a moderately strong relationship between teacher judgments and students' performance across all of the students, which is consistent with past research. Additionally, results indicated that teachers made more accurate judgments for lower-achieving students as compared to higher-achieving students, which is contrary to past research. The findings of the investigation suggest that teacher judgments of students' early literacy skills can be a valuable asset for school psychologists in early identification of students at-risk for reading difficulties. |
