With the 2026-2027 school year beginning in some parts of the country and soon to start in others, I thought it might be helpful to post an updated version of this previously published blog, which presents information for easy-to-administer informal foundational placement assessments. Deficiencies in foundational skills can go unnoticed, especially in the middle grades where it is expected that students will have mastered basic decoding skills. In two large-scale studies of students in grades 5 and above and 3 and above, researchers found that students needed a certain level of decoding skills in order to make progress. Students whose decoding skills were below this threshold made little to no growth in comprehension scores over a 3-year period (Wang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2024). Students with adequate decoding skills made six times as much progress as students with poor decoding skills. As Wang commented, “Our research has shown that students almost never achieve satisfactory comprehension if their decoding skill is below a certain threshold—and this will not get better with time.” This phenomenon has come to be called the “decoding threshold.” The percentage of students estimated to be reading below the decoding threshold is listed below:
| Grade | Percentage Below Threshold |
| 3 | 39 |
| 4 | 28 |
| 5 | 25 |
| 6 | 24 |
| 7 | 21 |
| 8 | 16 |
On my website, buildingliteracy.org, I have listed under the Assessing Reading tab a number of informal assessments that can be used to gauge students’ grasp of foundational skills. Available assessments include the following:
- Foundational Skills Screener-individual
- Letter Names Test-individual
- Letter Recognition Test-individual or group
- Detecting Beginning Sounds Test- individual or group
- Isolating Beginning Sounds Test-individual
- Beginning Consonant Letter Sounds-individual
- Word Reading Fluency-individual
- Individual Phonics Inventory
- Group Phonics Inventory
- Individual Graduated Syllable
- Group Graduated Syllable Survey
- Group Reading Vocabulary Inventory (newly added)-individual or group
Assessments can be initiated with The Foundational Skills Screener. The Foundational Skills Screener is a brief, individually administered assessment that ranges from beginning consonants to multisyllabic words. The Screener can be used to estimate the student’s level of need so that a more thorough assessment, such as the Beginning Consonant Letter Sounds, Individual Phonics Inventory, Group Phonics Inventory, Individual Graduated Syllable, Group Graduated Syllable Survey can be administered. The group assessments don’t do as good a job indicating needs as do the individually administered tests. However, they allow for the efficient assessment of groups of student. Students whose performance is problematic can be administered an individual version of the assessment.
Assessing the Decoding Skills of Older Students
Assessing the decoding skills of older students is more complex because a greater range of skills is involved. Some older readers might be functioning on a beginning reading level, whereas others might be using morphological roots to derive the meanings of challenging words. In addition, older students who are struggling might react negatively to the assessment of skills that are on low levels, even though they might not have learned those skills. To get a sense of where older readers are in their grasp of foundational skills without denigrating students reading significantly below grade level, I have added an informal screening test of written word knowledge, the Group Reading Vocabulary Inventory. Consisting of 50 multiple-choice items on a first- through a fifth-grade level, the Vocabulary Inventory is designed to estimate older students’ reading levels. Knowing, for instance, that a fifth grader is reading on an estimated second-grade level, you can assume that there is a weakness in basic foundational skills and use the Phonics Inventory and/or Syllable Survey to reveal specific needs. On the other hand, students scoring at the highest level would seem to ready for instruction in advanced morphemic analysis (roots, prefixes, suffixes).
References
Wang, Z., Sabatini, J., O’Reilly, T., & Weeks, J. (2019). Decoding and reading comprehension: A test of the decoding threshold hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 387–401.
Wang, Z., O’Reilly, T., & Sutherland, R. (2024). Replicating decoding threshold in ReadBasix®: Impact on reading skills development (Research Memorandum No. RM-24-06). ETS. https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RM-24-06.pdf