Once students are screened as struggling with literacy through universal screening, they need to be given a diagnostic assessment to determine precisely which skills and subskills they are lacking. Students who are reading below grade level at the middle school level are often struggling with decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Supporting students begins with determining the category of their challenges, from the universal screening process. Once that is determined, students can be further assessed to determine a path forward with interventions. Often, students who are struggling with reading at the middle school level have foundational skills lacking. Many may still struggle with decoding and need support with phonological and phonemic awareness. Once they master these skills, they may move on to higher-level reading interventions, but they cannot do so without a firm foundation. As such, the Beginning and Advanced Diagnostic Decoding Survey is often a good place to begin.

Beginning and Advanced Diagnostic Decoding Surveys

Both the Beginning and Advanced Decoding Survey through Really Great Reading focus specifically on decoding. They establish whether a student has gaps in their phonological awareness and pinpoints specific weaknesses in phonics. The Beginning Decoding Survey evaluates mastery of high-frequency words, single-syllable words, and basic phonics patterns. It is meant for students in grade 2. The Advanced Decoding Survey assesses students’ ability to read more complex phonics patterns, multisyllabic words, and advanced vowel spellings. The Advanced Decoding Survey also assesses a student’s ability to read familiar and unfamiliar multi-syllable words. It is meant for students in grades 3 to 12. The surveys are meant to be used with students between grades 2 and 12 who have been identified (most likely through universal screening) as struggling readers. These surveys do not assess for fluency, vocabulary, or comprehension. The decoding surveys have been evaluated by multiple independent academic researchers as valid and reliable. The findings of academic studies are presented in a report through the Pittsburg State University’s Center for Reading. The evidence for the reading assessment tool seems robust and comprehensive.

Each survey is meant to take 3-5 minutes per student. In my experience, it took a bit of time to set up and plan for, and then took 4 minutes per student (I did it with both my nephew and my son). It also took a minimal amount of time to score afterward. I found it straightforward to implement the diagnostic survey. I did not find the scoring and data interpretation as easy. The scoring is straightforward, but I thought there would be more direction on data interpretation. I think that the program wants you to purchase additional monitoring software and will evaluate scores further that way.

I was impressed at how well my son is reading! He is actually reading better than I thought and got everything correct. If he hadn’t, the survey would pinpoint exactly which phonics skills my son needs to work on. In my previous work with struggling readers at middle school, I was not aware of these diagnostic assessments, and just guessed what skills they needed from observation. This allows teachers to be so much more targeted, strategic, and, ultimately, effective in their interventions.

Once students were identified as struggling readers by universal screening assessments, I would use this diagnostic survey, and perhaps others, to identify the lacking skills and subskills of middle-school students. We have more and more struggling readers each year, and being able to identify, target, and improve the specific decoding skills that are underlying their challenges would be game-changing. Literacy teachers and literacy-trained learner support teachers would address specific phonological gaps through structured, repetitive literacy interventions, and would work with the student to build skills and confidence. Decoding challenges are often at the root of reading struggles, so working to improve these underlying skills will allow the student to proceed toward greater comprehension, fluency, and, eventually, proficiency.

I love the idea of pinpointing exactly what skills and subskills students are struggling with, and then adapting instruction and interventions accordingly. Diagnostic assessments allow teachers to be much more nimble and targeted in their teaching, and therefore increase the effectiveness of students’ learning. These surveys are limited in their ability to successfully measure comprehension and fluency, but a skilful teacher could get a general measure of that with a simple reading passage. Generally, struggling readers have some barrier involving decoding, so decoding is an excellent place to begin, and can offer a lot of insight in supporting students on their way to reading proficiency. The basic building blocks of reading need to be established in order for the student to continue toward fluency and proficiency. I would certainly use this tool within an MTSS at the middle school level to identify the specific interventions which will be most helpful with each student. In doing so, I would limit the amount of time they needed in terms of interventions, and improve the speed at which they experienced success. I would not only use this tool, however, as I found it was limited in data interpretation. I would like to look into other tools further and see if I could find ones that would be better fits for my school, or find others that I would use alongside this tool.

References

Hurford, D. P., Fender, A. C., and Ozier, M. W. (2023). Examination of the psychometric properties of the Beginning Diagnostic Decoding Surveys: Really Great Reading. Center for READing at Pittsburgh State University. https://www.reallygreatreading.com/sites/default/files/2025-01/report_of_the_psychometric_properties_of_the_beginning_decoding_survey.pdf