In the May 1980 issue of Academic Therapy (15:5), we published an article by Thomas J. Kampwirth and Marion Bates entitled, “Modality Preference and Teaching Method: A Review of the Research.” The article concluded by saying that “ … there is little research supporting the efficacy of matching children's auditory and visual preferred modalities to teaching approaches.” The article generated a great deal of interest. With the following two articles, the first by Walter Barbe, Raymond Swassing, and Michael Milone, and the second a reply by Thomas Kampwirth, Academic Therapy intends to provide a forum for the discussion of this important topic in the field of learning disabilities. Editor.

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Technical adequacy and information/cost return were examined for four early reading measures: the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), STAR Early Literacy (SEL), Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE), and the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI). All four assessments were administered to the same students in each of Grades K through 2 over a 5-week period; the samples included 200 students per grade from 7 states. Both SEL and DIBELS were administered twice to establish their retest reliability in each grade. We focused on the convergent validity of each assessment for measuring five critical components of reading development identified by the U.S. National Research Panel: Phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. DIBELS and TPRI both are asserted to assess all five of these components; GRADE and STAR Early Literacy explicitly measure all except fluency. For all components, correlations among relevant subtests were high and comparable. The pattern of intercorrelations of nonfluency measures with fluency suggests the tests of fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and word reading are measuring the same underlying construct. A separate cost-benefit study was conducted and showed that STAR Early Literacy was the most costeffective measure among those studied. In terms of amount of time per unit of test administration or teachers' time, CAT (computerized adaptive testing) in general, and STAR Early Literacy in particular, is an attractive option for early reading assessment. ResuméL'adéquation technique et les données reliées aux coûts par rapport aux dépenses ont été examinées pour les outils d'évaluations suivants: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), STAR Early Literacy (SEL), Group Reading Assessment

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