y, .85; validity with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for
Children (WISC-III; Wechsler, 1991) performance scale, .47.
Receptive Vocabulary. In the British Picture Vocabulary Scale
(BPVS; Dunn, Dunn, Whetton, & Burley, 1997), children are shown four
line drawings and asked to point to the one that best illustrates a word
spoken by the investigator: reliability, .89; validity with the
Expressive One-word Vocabulary test (Gardner, 1990), .72.
Grammar. In the Test of Reception of Grammar (TROG; Bishop, 1983),
children are shown four pictures and the investigator reads a sentence.
The child selects a picture that matches the sentence structure:
reliability, .88; validity with the Clinical Evaluation of Language
Fundamentals: Revised UK Edition (CELF-[R.sup.UK]; Peers, Lloyd, &
Foster, 1999), .53.
The CELF-[R.sup.UK] (Peers et al., 1999) Formulated Sentences
subtest requires a child to produce a sentence in response to an orally
presented single word or two-word combination: reliability, .82;
validity with other CELF-[R.sup.UK] expressive subscales, .43-.49. The
Listening to Paragraphs subtest requires the child to attend to a short
paragraph and answer specific questions related to the content:
reliability, .74; validity with other receptive scales, .30-.43
Reading Decoding. The BAS II Word Reading scale (Elliott et al.,
1997) assesses recognition and oral reading of single words:
reliability, .93; validity with Wechsler Objective Reading Dimensions
reading scale, .71 (WORD; Wechsler, 1993). The Test of Word Reading
Efficiency (TOWRE; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999) contains two
subtests. The Sight Word Efficiency (SWE) subtest assesses the number of
real printed words that can be accurately read within 45 sec, and the
Phonetic Decoding Efficiency (PDE) subtest measures the number of
pronounceable printed nonwords that can be accurately decoded within 45
sec: interscorer reliability, .99; test-retest reliability, .90 and
above; validity, .92-.94 SWE and .89-.91 PWE (Woodcock Reading Mastery
Scales-Revised, Woodcock, 1987).
Reading Comprehension. The WORD Reading Comprehension scale
(Wechsler, 1993) measures the student's understanding of short
written passages of text. With this test, the child reads a passage out
loud or silently and then answers comprehension questions posed orally
by the examiner. The measure has a split-half reliability for children
age 15 to 16 of .82
Spelling. The BAS II Spelling scale (Elliott et al., 1997) provides
a number of phonetically regular and irregular words to assess the
child's ability to produce correct spellings. Each item is first
presented in isolation, then within the context of a sentence, and then
again in isolation. The child has to respond by writing the word:
reliability, .91; validity with WORD Spelling (Wechsler, 1993), .63.
Written Language. The WOLD Writing Expression test (Wechsler, 1996;
Rust, 1996) requires children to write a letter describing their ideal
house. Children are allowed 15 min to complete the task. The written
output can be scored either holistically or analytically: reliability,
.89, correlation with Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational
Battery-Revised (Mather & Jaffe, 1996) Dictation = 0.72. The
analytic scale comprises six dimensions, each rated on a 4-point scale,
which are scored independently of each other: ideas and development;
organization, unity and coherence; vocabulary; sentence structure and
variety; grammar and usage; and capitalization and punctuation.
Writing Fluency. Our handwriting fluency task (based on Berninger,
Mizokawa, & Bragg, 1991) requires students to write out the letters
of the alphabet, in lower case, in order; as quickly as possible in 1
min. Letters are only counted towards a total number of letters per
minute if the letters are in the correct order and legible. The task has
an interrater reliability of r = 0.97 (Berninger et al., 1997). It has
been incorporated into the Process Assessment of the Learner[TM]
(PAL[TM]) Test Battery (Berninger, 2001), where it has been shown to
conform fully with psychometric standards of relia