Capti

Your Privacy Rights | Capti Student Data Protection

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Your Privacy Rights

This page allows you to submit requests to exercise privacy rights, whether on your own behalf or on behalf of another individual.

Types of Requests

Access

Request to know what personal information Capti has collected about you, including the categories of information, sources from which it was collected, the business or commercial purposes for collecting it, and the third parties with whom it has been shared.

Copy

Request to receive a portable copy of your personal information in a readily usable format.

Correction

Request that Capti correct any inaccurate personal information we hold about you.

Deletion

Request that Capti delete personal information it holds about you, subject to applicable legal exceptions.

Submit privacy request

Important Information

Scope of Obligations Statement

Requests submitted through this form will be processed to the extent required by applicable law. Capti's obligations vary depending on your state of residence and the nature of your relationship with Capti. Submission of a request does not guarantee a particular outcome. Capti will inform you of the basis for any decision to decline a request in whole or in part.

Authorized Agent Requirements

You may designate an authorized agent to submit a privacy rights request on your behalf. To process a request submitted by an agent, Capti requires all of the following:

Written authorization signed by you (the consumer) designating the agent to act on your behalf.
Verification of the agent's own identity.
Direct confirmation from you that you have authorized the agent to submit the request — Capti will contact you separately for this confirmation before processing the request.

Capti reserves the right to deny a request from an agent who fails to satisfy any of these requirements.

Response Timeline

Capti will respond to your request within 45 days of receipt. If Capti requires additional time to process your request, it will notify you of the extension and the reason for it within the initial 45-day period. The response period may be extended by up to an additional 45 days where reasonably necessary. Responses to verified requests are provided free of charge, up to twice per calendar year.

Education Accounts — Note for Parents

If your child accesses Capti through a school or district program, the school or district authorized the collection and use of your child's data under FERPA. Rights regarding student education records are exercised through the school or district, not directly through Capti. Parents and eligible students should contact the child's school or district in the first instance. The school or district may then direct a request to Capti on your behalf. To the extent student data constitutes education records under FERPA, it may be exempt from certain state consumer privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Appeal Process

If Capti declines your request in whole or in part, you have the right to appeal that decision. To submit an appeal, email privacy@capti.com with the subject line "Privacy Rights Appeal" and include your original request reference and the basis for your appeal. Capti will respond to your appeal within 45 days with a written explanation of its decision. If your appeal is denied, Capti will provide information on how to contact your state's Attorney General or applicable regulatory authority to submit a complaint.

Your Privacy Choices | Capti Data Preferences

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Your Privacy Choices

At Capti, we respect your privacy and give you real control over how your personal information is used. This page shows your current privacy preferences and lets you manage them.

Overall Tracking Protection

This is the combined result of your browser + Capti.com settings

Tracking is Currently Allowed

We are not blocking analytics or tracking on this site.

When enabled, this setting prevents the sale or sharing of your personal information through online tracking technologies such as cookies, pixels, and similar technologies. This includes third-party advertising partners and analytics services that may track your browsing behavior across websites.

Browser Global Privacy Control (GPC)

This is set in your browser and applies to all websites

Status:

Disabled

Your browser is automatically telling websites not to sell or share your personal information.

How to turn it on

Firefox

Go to Settings → Privacy & Security and enable "Tell websites not to sell or share my data"

Chrome

Install the Global Privacy Control Inspector extension from the Chrome Web Store

Specific Preference

This setting only affects this website

Opt out of tracking & analytics on Capti.com only

When enabled, we block all non-essential cookies on this site.

Disabled

ReadBasix Success Stories: District Literacy Wins

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ReadBasix Success Stories

Better Data. Better Instruction. See how schools close gaps with ReadBasix.

Cloquet Secondary Schools

Minnesota

Learn how Cloquet Middle and High School revolutionized their literacy practices to align with the Minnesota READ Act. Discover how they utilized Capti ReadBasix to identify and address foundational reading gaps, leading to improved student outcomes. Presenters will share data, personal experiences, and practical tips for implementing effective interventions in secondary settings despite common constraints and challenges that secondary schedules and staffing patterns present.

Learn more about Cloquet’s results

View Case Study

Capti ReadBasix: Adolescent Literacy Assessment for Secondary Students

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Capti ReadBasix

A diagnostic reading assessment for secondary students that quickly identifies the root causes of their reading difficulties.

Book a Demo Explore Features

What is ReadBasix?

ReadBasix is a diagnostic reading assessment designed specifically for secondary students. ReadBasix is the only assessment that quickly and reliably identifies the root causes of secondary students' reading difficulties.

Main applications

Inform Response to Intervention and Multi Tiered System of Supports with ReadBasix extensive reports.

Boost RTI/MTSS with Data Insights

Screen students with ReadBasix quickly and efficiently. ReadBasix subtests can be administered individually, saving you time and allowing you to work within your class schedule.

Identify At-Risk Readers

ReadBasix has built in benchmark reporting, allowing you to track your students' annual progress over BOY, MOY, and EOY reports.

Measure Literacy Growth

ReadBasix was designed as a foundational skill diagnostic for learners in grades 3-12. It is simply, the best diagnostic assessment available for secondary students.

Uncover Reading Struggle Causes

ReadBasix individual subtests take less than 10 minutes to administer, allowing you to progress monitor and track intervention progress efficiently.

Track Intervention Progress

Get one of the most accurate Lexile® Reading Measures available! Lexile® is calculated in ReadBasix by 90 unique data points.

Match Students to Leveled Texts

ReadBasix uses word reading tasks and reading fluency to identify students who struggle with word-level reading, a potential sign of dyslexia.

Detect Dyslexia Risk Fast

Solution scope

Type of students:
secondary

ReadBasix is developed for adolescent readers, providing age-appropriate content, carefully crafted questions, and a modern, intuitive interface, while comprehensively assessing all essential foundational reading skills.

Organizations scale:
schools and districts

From large urban districts serving over 50,000 students to small rural schools with fewer than 100, ReadBasix adapts to your unique educational setting. No matter the size or demographics of your student population, ReadBasix empowers your educators with a flexible and scalable solution.

Geography:
USA

Capti ReadBasix is used by schools and districts across the United States. International schools are welcome to use ReadBasix, but our literacy and support teams are US based.

Key benefits

Six individual subtests

ReadBasix is the only assessment that allows educators to only test the reading skills they need. Each subtest is a mini-assessment!

Extensive reports

ReadBasix is equipped with extensive and comprehensive reports. Learn more about what we measure.

Data-driven
recommendations

ReadBasix makes actionable research-based instructional recommendations based on deep analysis of student performance.

Professional learning and coaching

We partner with schools and districts to design impactful tailored learning experiences for upper elementary through high school teachers.

Unique advantages

Tailored for secondary

ReadBasix has been researched and designed specifically for secondary students.

True diagnostic

ReadBasix can be used to dive deep into foundational reading skills.

Fast and flexible

ReadBasix assessment administration is highly efficient and customizable, easily able to fit unique scheduling needs.

District tailored professional learning

We provide tailored professional learning sessions that analyze ReadBasix assessment results, allowing your educators to make an immediate impact.

The Capti ReadBasix
model for secondary
literacy issues

6 Subtests Reports Data Review Recommendations Interventions

Testimonials

Everyone on your end has been super helpful, your team suggested some resources, many of which were free which was fantastic!

Jenna Osborn

Reading Interventionist, Gresham School District

ReadBasix allowed us to find where students were struggling, group them, and provide targeted instruction...

Sara Henschell

Teacher, Baltimore City Public Schools, MD

The assessment gives us information that our other assessments don't.

Kate Leo

Reading Specialist, Dowling Catholic High School

In a lot of ways RISE [ReadBasix] helped to not only provide teachers with information but to instruct teachers and build their knowledge of how young people become proficient readers, even at a more advanced level...

Sonja Brookins-Santelises

Chief Academic Officer, Baltimore City Public Schools, MD

The feedback from the students was also a huge driving piece to get the teachers to say: Okay, we're ready to take that next step...

Yvette Herrera

Tahoe Truckee High School

We think your program has really helped with locating those students who have foundational reading deficits.

Brandice Walton

Reading Specialist

All Testimonials

Research

Capti is constantly researching and validating new assessments, interventions and more. Check out our latest research and sign up to participate in trials!

Explore research database

Services

Overview and training

PD sessions on SoR

Data review sessions

Coaching

Office hours

Download MTSS toolkit

Download our toolkit to help your literacy team set up an MTSS framework. Specifically focused on secondary schools, this toolkit has everything you need to create a multi-tiered system of support for your school or district.

Download

Reports

ReadBasix reports are extensive and cover everything from full district to personalized individual reports. Click on the links below to explore the reports relevant to you.

Explore the Reports

Success Stories

See how schools are transforming reading outcomes with Capti ReadBasix.

Cloquet Secondary Schools

Minnesota

Learn how Cloquet Middle and High School used Capti ReadBasix to align with the Minnesota READ Act and address foundational reading gaps. Presenters share data, experiences, and strategies for effective literacy intervention within the realities of secondary schedules and staffing.

View Case Study

All Success Stories

Ready to make a difference?

Book a personalized demo with our team today and discover how ReadBasix can empower your educators and students.

Book a Demo

Capti Terms of Service | User Agreement & Licensing Conditions

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Terms of Service

Version Effective Date: 04/10/2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the Public Site and, where applicable, the School Services. In these Terms, “you” and “your” mean the individual person who accesses or uses the Public Site or the School Services.

These Terms are divided into three parts:

Part A applies to all users of the Public Site.
Part B applies in addition to Part A if you access or use any School Services.
Part C applies to both the Public Site and the School Services, unless a provision states otherwise.

If you access or use the Public Site, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, you must not access or use the Public Site.

If you access or use any School Services through an account, subscription, or other arrangement maintained by a Customer, your use may also be subject to that Customer’s agreement with Charmtech Labs LLC, doing business as Capti (“Capti,” “Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), as well as applicable Customer policies.

If you accept these Terms, create an account, administer an account, or otherwise access or use the School Services on behalf of a Customer or other organization, you represent and warrant that you have authority to do so on that organization’s behalf. In that case, references to “you” may also include that organization where the context requires. Where the context requires in connection with the School Services, obligations stated to apply to “you” also apply to the applicable Customer.

A Customer accepts these Terms by entering into an Order, creating, provisioning, administering, or maintaining accounts for the School Services, or permitting Authorized Users to access or use the School Services.

If these Terms conflict with an applicable signed Order, data processing agreement, or other written agreement between Capti and a Customer, that signed agreement controls to the extent of the conflict.

For purposes of these Terms:

“Authorized User” means an individual, including a student, parent, teacher, proctor, facilitator, administrator, staff member, or other permitted user, whom a Customer authorizes to access and use the School Services under that Customer’s account or arrangement with Capti.
“Customer” means the school district, school, college, university, or other educational institution, or other organization, that purchases, subscribes to, or otherwise receives access to the School Services under an Order or other account arrangement with Capti.
“Customer Data” means data, content, materials, and information submitted to, uploaded to, transmitted through, or otherwise made available to Capti or the School Services by or on behalf of the Customer or its Authorized Users, including outputs generated by the School Services for the Customer based on such data, content, materials, or information. Customer Data does not include Capti’s technology, software, models, algorithms, documentation, general know-how, service usage metadata that does not identify the Customer or any individual, or de-identified and aggregated data permitted under these Terms.
“Student Data” means the subset of Customer Data that constitutes personal information of students. Student Data is subject to the same terms, conditions, and limitations applicable to Customer Data under these Terms and does not create any additional obligations on Capti beyond those expressly stated in these Terms, the applicable Order, Capti’s Privacy Policy, or another written agreement between Capti and the Customer.
“Order” means an ordering document, order form, statement of work, quote, purchase document, online subscription flow, or other written or electronic ordering mechanism accepted by Capti and the applicable Customer for the School Services.
“Public Site” means the publicly accessible portions of the Capti website and related online pages, including informational, marketing, support, and other general-access content that Capti makes available without requiring an authenticated School Services login.
“School Services” means Capti’s hosted applications, platform features, assessments, interventions, educator and administrator tools, student-facing functionality, APIs, related mobile applications, and other products or services that Capti makes available to schools, districts, researchers, and other educational institutions under an Order, subscription, or other customer arrangement.

Part A. Public Site Terms

1. Permitted Use of the Public Site

Subject to these Terms, you may access and use the Public Site for your own lawful internal business, educational, or informational purposes.

You may not use the Public Site in any manner that:

violates any applicable law or regulation;
infringes, misappropriates, or otherwise violates the rights of Capti or any third party;
interferes with or disrupts the Public Site or the servers or networks connected to it;
attempts to gain unauthorized access to any part of the Public Site, any related systems, or any accounts, data, or materials not intended for you;
uses the Public Site to transmit unlawful, infringing, defamatory, abusive, obscene, fraudulent, or otherwise objectionable material; or
could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the Public Site.

2. Public Site Content and Intellectual Property

The Public Site, including its layout, design, text, graphics, logos, images, software, interfaces, audiovisual materials, downloads, and other content made available by Capti on or through the Public Site (“Site Content”), is owned by or licensed to Capti and is protected by intellectual property and other applicable laws.

Subject to these Terms, Capti grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and use the Public Site and to view the Site Content solely for your own lawful internal business, educational, or informational purposes.

Except as expressly permitted by these Terms, you may not:

copy, reproduce, republish, distribute, modify, display, perform, create derivative works from, or otherwise exploit any Site Content;
remove, alter, or obscure any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notices;
use any Site Content for competitive analysis or to develop, train, benchmark, or support a competing product or service; or
frame, mirror, or otherwise re-display any portion of the Public Site on any other website or service.

All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Capti and its licensors.

3. Public Site Restrictions

Without limiting Section 1 or Section 2, you may not, and may not permit any third party to:

use any robot, spider, scraper, crawler, data mining tool, or similar automated means to access, search, monitor, copy, extract, or compile content or information from the Public Site;
attempt to probe, scan, test, or circumvent the vulnerability or security of the Public Site;
upload, post, transmit, or otherwise introduce any virus, malware, Trojan horse, worm, time bomb, corrupted file, or other harmful code;
reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code or underlying structure of any software or technology used in connection with the Public Site, except to the extent such restriction is prohibited by applicable law;
use the Public Site in a manner intended to harvest personal information or other data from users of the Public Site; or
use the Public Site for any fraudulent, misleading, or unlawful purpose.

4. Third-Party Links and Resources

The Public Site may contain links to third-party websites, services, content, or resources that Capti does not own or control. Those links are provided for convenience only.

Capti is not responsible for, and does not endorse, control, or assume responsibility for, any third-party websites, services, content, products, or resources, or for any terms, policies, or practices of any third party. If you access any third-party website or resource from the Public Site, you do so at your own risk.

5. Copyright Complaints

Capti respects the intellectual property rights of others and responds to notices of alleged copyright infringement in accordance with applicable law.

If you believe that content made available on or through the Public Site infringes your copyright, you may submit a written notice to Capti’s designated copyright contact that includes the information required by applicable law, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, where applicable.

Capti may remove or disable access to allegedly infringing material and may terminate access for repeat infringers where appropriate.

Charmtech Labs LLC
Attn: Legal Department
PO Box 896
Buffalo, NY 14205
Email: info@capti.com

6. Public Site Availability and Changes

Capti may modify, suspend, or discontinue all or any part of the Public Site at any time, with or without notice.

Capti does not undertake any obligation to maintain the Public Site, any particular feature of the Public Site, or any content made available through the Public Site.

7. Public Site Disclaimer

The Public Site and all Site Content are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Capti disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, with respect to the Public Site and Site Content, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, or availability.

Capti does not warrant that the Public Site will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of viruses or other harmful components, or that any content on the Public Site will be current, complete, or accurate.

Part B. School Services Terms

8. Access to School Services

Subject to these Terms and any applicable Order, Capti grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to access and use the School Services during the applicable subscription or service period solely for the Customer’s internal educational and administrative purposes, or as otherwise expressly permitted in the applicable Order.

Your right to access and use the School Services is limited to the scope, number of Authorized Users, product modules, and other parameters set forth in the applicable Order or account arrangement.

Capti will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the School Services available in accordance with its standard operational practices. Capti may update, enhance, modify, or discontinue particular features or functionality of the School Services from time to time. Capti will use commercially reasonable efforts not to materially reduce the core functionality of paid School Services identified in the applicable Order or in Capti’s then-current documentation for those School Services during the then-current Order term, except where reasonably necessary for legal, security, technical, or operational reasons.

The School Services are educational tools intended to support instruction, assessment, and administration. They do not replace professional educational judgment or independent review by teachers, administrators, or other qualified personnel.

The School Services require Internet connectivity and rely on third-party networks, infrastructure, and service providers. Capti is not responsible for, and will have no liability arising from, any delay, interruption, degradation, or failure caused by internet connectivity issues, third-party network or infrastructure failures, or other conditions outside Capti's reasonable control.

If the School Services experience material downtime, service degradation, or other operational failures not caused by the Customer, the Customer's exclusive remedy and Capti's sole liability will be for Capti to use commercially reasonable efforts to restore the affected School Services. If Capti fails to restore the affected School Services within a commercially reasonable period, the Customer may terminate the affected Order and receive a pro-rata refund of prepaid fees for the unused portion of the then-current term. This remedy is in addition to, and does not limit, any rights the Customer may have under Section 31 (Limitation of Liability) or Section 32 (Indemnification).

9. Orders, Accounts, and Authorized Users

Access to School Services may require an Order, an account, or both. The applicable Customer is responsible for its Authorized Users and for compliance with these Terms by anyone accessing the School Services through the Customer’s accounts or credentials.

You must provide accurate and complete account information and keep that information reasonably current.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of login credentials assigned to you and for all activities that occur through your account.

A Customer may permit only its Authorized Users to access and use the School Services, and only up to any applicable usage limits, seat limits, or other restrictions set forth in the applicable Order or account arrangement.

If you are an administrator or other person with authority over a Customer account, you are responsible for managing user access permissions in a manner consistent with the Customer’s rights and obligations under the applicable Order and these Terms. Capti is not responsible for actions taken by Customer administrators or Authorized Users within the permissions, settings, or access rights assigned by or on behalf of the Customer.

Authorized Users access the School Services under the Customer’s account rights and do not thereby amend or supersede the Customer’s separate agreements with Capti.

10. Licensed Scope and Overage Use

If the applicable Order or account arrangement includes a limit on Authorized Users, seats, usage volumes, or other measurable entitlements, the School Services may be used only within those limits unless otherwise agreed in writing.

If the number of Authorized Users or the Customer’s actual use exceeds the contracted limits, Capti may notify the Customer and work in good faith with the Customer to address the overage, including by issuing a supplemental order, invoice, or true-up for the excess use.

Capti will provide reasonable detail supporting any claimed overage upon request. The Customer may raise any good-faith dispute about the claimed overage within thirty (30) days after notice, and the parties will work together promptly to resolve the issue.

11. Customer Responsibilities

You are responsible for using the School Services in compliance with these Terms, the applicable Order, and applicable laws.

If you use the School Services through or on behalf of a school, district, or other educational institution, you are also responsible for complying with the policies and requirements of that institution that apply to your use of the School Services.

The Customer is responsible for:

designating and managing its Authorized Users;
obtaining any permissions, consents, or internal approvals it determines are necessary for its use of the School Services;
ensuring that its Authorized Users do not transmit sensitive personal information to Capti through unsecured or unintended channels (such as email), except where appropriate and permitted under applicable law;
maintaining the security of its own systems, devices, and credentials used to access the School Services; and
using the School Services only for authorized educational and administrative purposes.

12. School Services Restrictions

In addition to the restrictions in Part A, you may not, and may not permit any third party to:

license, sublicense, sell, resell, rent, lease, outsource, time-share, or otherwise make the School Services available to any person except Authorized Users as expressly permitted under the applicable Order;
use the School Services to develop, train, benchmark, or support a competing product or service;
circumvent or exceed any account limitations, seat restrictions, access controls, or usage parameters of the School Services;
access or use the School Services in a manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the School Services or interfere with any other user’s access or use;
access the School Services by any means other than the interfaces and methods expressly authorized by Capti; or
use the School Services for unlawful, infringing, fraudulent, or misleading purposes.

13. Customer Data

As between Capti and the applicable Customer, the Customer retains its rights in Customer Data, including any Student Data contained therein.

The Customer is responsible for the accuracy, quality, legality, and means of obtaining Customer Data, and for ensuring that it has all rights and permissions necessary for Capti to process Customer Data in connection with the School Services.

Capti will process Customer Data, including Student Data, in accordance with these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and applicable law. Subject to these Terms, the applicable Order, Capti’s then-current Privacy Policy, and any other written agreement between Capti and the Customer, the Customer grants Capti a non-exclusive, worldwide, limited right to host, store, process, transmit, display, modify, and otherwise use Customer Data solely as necessary to provide, maintain, support, secure, and operate the School Services for the Customer and its Authorized Users, and to improve the School Services only through the use of de-identified and aggregated data as permitted by applicable law, the Privacy Policy, and any applicable written agreement between Capti and the Customer.

Capti may use de-identified and aggregated data derived from the School Services for internal analytics, security, service improvement, product performance evaluation, benchmarking, and reporting purposes, but only to the extent permitted by applicable law and any applicable written agreement between Capti and the Customer, and only if such data does not identify, and cannot reasonably be used to identify, the Customer or any individual.

14. Service Providers

Capti may use affiliates, contractors, hosting providers, subprocessors, and other service providers to provide, maintain, support, secure, and improve the School Services, subject to applicable confidentiality obligations, Capti’s Privacy Policy, any applicable written agreement between Capti and the Customer, and applicable law.

15. Customer Data License Limitations

Except as expressly permitted in these Terms, the applicable Order, Capti’s Privacy Policy, or another written agreement between Capti and the Customer, Capti will not sell Customer Data or disclose Customer Data to third parties except as necessary to provide the School Services, comply with law, protect the School Services, or enforce Capti’s rights.

Nothing in these Terms gives Capti ownership of Customer Data.

Certain School Services may allow authorized educators, administrators, or other Authorized Users designated by the Customer to access, review, and use recordings, transcripts, scores, reports, or other outputs generated through the School Services, but only as authorized by the applicable Customer arrangement and applicable law. For the avoidance of doubt, the Customer and its Authorized Users may prepare, copy, display, and present reports, charts, and other outputs generated by the School Services for the Customer’s internal educational and administrative purposes, including presentations to school boards, administrators, or other internal stakeholders.

16. Customer-Provided Content and Materials

If the School Services permit you or any Authorized User to upload, submit, post, transmit, or otherwise provide content or materials for use with the School Services, you represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to do so and that such content or materials do not infringe or violate any third-party rights or applicable law.

Capti may remove or disable access to any content or materials that violate these Terms, infringe third-party rights, create a security risk, or may expose Capti or others to liability.

17. Monitoring and Enforcement

Subject to applicable law, Capti may monitor use of the Public Site and School Services as reasonably necessary to protect the security, integrity, availability, and lawful operation of the Public Site and School Services, to enforce these Terms, and to prevent fraud, misuse, or unauthorized access.

18. Assessment Integrity

Assessment content, items, prompts, passages, scoring methodologies, rubrics, scoring algorithms, and related materials made available through the School Services (collectively, “Assessment Materials”) are the Confidential Information and proprietary information of Capti and are protected by intellectual property and other applicable laws. All rights in Assessment Materials are reserved by Capti.

The Customer and its Authorized Users may not copy, reproduce, distribute, disclose, publish, transmit, or otherwise make available any Assessment Materials to any person or entity except as expressly permitted in writing by Capti or as strictly necessary for authorized use of the School Services in accordance with these Terms and the applicable Order. The Customer will take reasonable precautions to prevent unauthorized access to or disclosure of Assessment Materials, including implementing appropriate administrative controls for Authorized Users who have access to assessment content.

The Customer is solely responsible for administering assessments in accordance with Capti’s then-current administration guidelines, instructions, and documentation as made available by Capti from time to time. The Customer is solely responsible for establishing and maintaining proper testing conditions, including appropriate supervision, proctoring, and environmental controls, and for taking reasonable steps to prevent and detect cheating, collusion, unauthorized assistance, or other irregularities during assessment administration. Capti may make administration guidelines available through the School Services, the Public Site, or other reasonable means, and the Customer is responsible for ensuring that its Authorized Users are aware of and comply with those guidelines.

If Capti reasonably determines that the integrity of any assessment or assessment results has been or may have been compromised by improper administration, unauthorized access to assessment content, cheating, or any other irregularity attributable to the Customer or its Authorized Users, Capti may, in its sole discretion, invalidate the affected assessment results and notify the Customer accordingly. Capti will have no liability to the Customer or any Authorized User arising from or related to any such invalidation.

Capti is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims any liability arising from, assessment results that are inaccurate, invalid, or otherwise affected by the Customer’s failure to administer assessments in accordance with Capti’s guidelines, by improper testing conditions, or by cheating or other irregularities within the Customer’s reasonable control. The Customer’s sole remedy in connection with any disputed assessment result is to contact Capti and request review in accordance with Capti’s then-current support procedures.

19. Automated Features and Scoring

Certain School Services include automated scoring, analytics, reporting, and artificial intelligence or machine learning features, including automated scoring of student responses and AI-assisted generation of assessment content (“Automated Features”). Automated Features are designed to support professional educator and administrator judgment, not to replace it. Educators, administrators, and other qualified personnel remain solely responsible for reviewing, interpreting, and acting upon any scores, reports, analytics, or other outputs generated by Automated Features.

Automated Features may produce errors, inconsistencies, or unexpected results. Capti does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any output produced by Automated Features, and expressly disclaims any such warranty to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. The Customer acknowledges that Automated Features are tools to inform, not to determine, educational decisions.

No high-stakes educational decision, including but not limited to decisions regarding student placement, promotion, retention, graduation, or intervention eligibility, should be made solely on the basis of outputs generated by Automated Features without independent review and professional judgment by a qualified educator or administrator. Capti will have no liability for any educational decision made by the Customer or any Authorized User, whether or not that decision was informed in whole or in part by outputs generated by Automated Features.

To the extent the School Services include assessment content or other materials generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence, Capti may apply internal review processes prior to making such content available through the School Services; however, Capti makes no representation or warranty regarding the nature, scope, or adequacy of any such review. Capti does not warrant that AI-generated content is free from error, bias, or inaccuracy, and the Customer is solely responsible for determining whether any such content is suitable for its intended educational purposes and population. The Customer should independently review AI-generated assessment items and other AI-generated content before use and should not rely on such content without applying its own professional judgment.

20. Professional Development Services

Capti may provide training sessions, implementation support, data review sessions, coaching, onboarding assistance, and other professional development services to Customers as described on the Public Site or in an applicable Order (“Professional Development Services”). The scope, format, timing, and fees, if any, applicable to Professional Development Services will be as set forth in the applicable Order or as otherwise agreed in writing between Capti and the Customer.

Professional Development Services are provided solely for the Customer’s internal educational and administrative purposes. Professional Development Services are informational and training in nature and do not constitute professional, legal, clinical, or educational therapy advice. Capti makes no representation or warranty that Professional Development Services will produce any particular instructional, academic, or administrative outcome, and any results will depend substantially on the Customer’s own implementation, practices, and decisions.

The Customer is responsible for ensuring appropriate participation by its personnel in any scheduled Professional Development Services, including coordinating the availability of relevant staff and providing Capti with reasonable access to the Customer’s environment and personnel as necessary for delivery. Capti’s ability to deliver Professional Development Services as scheduled is contingent on the Customer’s timely cooperation and the availability of appropriate personnel and technical resources. If the Customer fails to fulfill its cooperation obligations or cancels or reschedules a session with less than five (5) business days’ advance written notice, Capti will have no obligation to reschedule at no additional charge, and any applicable fees for the cancelled or missed session will remain due and payable in accordance with the applicable Order.

To the extent that Professional Development Services involve access to, review of, or discussion of Customer Data, including Student Data, such access and use will be subject to these Terms, the applicable Order, and Capti’s Privacy Policy, in the same manner as Customer Data accessed or processed through the School Services.

21. Confidentiality

For purposes of these Terms, “Confidential Information” means non-public business, technical, operational, or commercial information disclosed by one party to the other that is designated as confidential or that reasonably should be understood to be confidential based on the nature of the information and the circumstances of disclosure.

Each party will protect the other party’s Confidential Information using at least reasonable care and will use the other party’s Confidential Information only as necessary to exercise its rights and perform its obligations under these Terms, the applicable Order, or another applicable written agreement.

Confidential Information does not include information that:

is or becomes publicly available through no wrongful act or omission of the receiving party;
was lawfully known to the receiving party without restriction before disclosure;
is lawfully received from a third party without breach of any confidentiality obligation; or
is independently developed without use of the disclosing party’s Confidential Information.

A receiving party may disclose Confidential Information if required by law, subpoena, court order, or governmental authority, provided that, to the extent legally permitted, the receiving party gives the disclosing party prompt notice so the disclosing party may seek protective treatment.

22. Fees and Payment

The Customer will pay all fees and charges set forth in the applicable Order in accordance with the payment terms stated in that Order.

If an Order does not specify a payment deadline, invoiced amounts are due within thirty (30) days after the invoice date.

Except as expressly stated otherwise in these Terms or the applicable Order, fees are non-cancelable and non-refundable.

If the Customer fails to pay any amount when due, and such amount is not subject to a good-faith dispute communicated in writing to Capti within fifteen (15) days after the invoice date identifying with reasonable specificity the basis for the dispute, Capti may, after providing notice under Section 34 and a reasonable opportunity to cure (not less than ten (10) days), suspend access to the affected School Services until the overdue amount is paid. Any portion of an invoice not disputed in accordance with this Section will be deemed accepted and payable. Capti may continue to exercise any other rights or remedies available under these Terms or applicable law.

23. Taxes

Fees and charges for the School Services do not include taxes unless expressly stated otherwise in the applicable Order.

The Customer is responsible for all sales, use, excise, value added, goods and services, withholding, and similar taxes, duties, or charges imposed by any governmental authority in connection with the School Services, other than taxes based on Capti’s net income.

If the Customer claims an exemption from any such taxes, the Customer will provide appropriate exemption documentation upon request.

24. Suspension

Capti may suspend access to all or any part of the School Services if Capti reasonably determines that:

you or any Authorized User are using the School Services in violation of these Terms or applicable law;
suspension is necessary to prevent harm to the School Services, other users, or third parties;
there is a security incident or other threat affecting the School Services;
suspension is required by law or at the direction of a governmental authority; or
the Customer has failed to pay undisputed fees after notice under Section 34 and an opportunity to cure.

Where practicable under the circumstances, Capti will use reasonable efforts to provide advance notice of any suspension and to limit its scope and duration. Capti’s good-faith determination regarding the necessity, scope, and duration of any suspension will be presumed reasonable and will not be subject to challenge except in the case of Capti’s gross negligence or willful misconduct.

25. Term and Termination

These Terms will remain in effect with respect to your use of the Public Site for so long as you access or use the Public Site.

With respect to School Services, these Terms will remain in effect for so long as the applicable Customer has an active Order or account arrangement with Capti, and thereafter for so long as you or the Customer continue to access or use the School Services.

Either party may terminate a particular Order or the affected School Services as permitted in the applicable Order or another signed written agreement between Capti and the Customer.

If no such written agreement addresses termination, then:

either party may terminate the affected School Services for material breach by the other party if the breach remains uncured thirty (30) days after notice under Section 34, except that nonpayment may be cured within ten (10) days after notice under Section 34; and
Capti may terminate or suspend access immediately if continued access would create a security risk, violate law, or materially impair the School Services.

Upon expiration or termination of the School Services, your right to access and use the affected School Services will end, and you and the applicable Customer must cease using them, except as otherwise expressly permitted in writing by Capti. The Customer and its Authorized Users must immediately stop using any related credentials and access methods, and the Customer will remain responsible for obligations incurred before termination and for misuse of accounts or credentials to the extent caused by the Customer’s failure to disable access within its reasonable control.

Unless otherwise stated in the applicable Order or another written agreement between Capti and the Customer, Capti may retain and delete Customer Data in accordance with its standard retention practices and Privacy Policy, and may delete Customer Data following termination after any applicable retrieval period. The Customer may export or retrieve Customer Data prior to termination using the export functionality available within the School Services, or as otherwise described in the Privacy Policy.

Any post-termination access to or deletion of Customer Data will also be governed by the applicable Order, Capti’s Privacy Policy, and any other written agreement between Capti and the Customer.

26. Changes to School Services and These Terms

Capti may modify the School Services from time to time.

Capti may also revise these Terms from time to time. If Capti makes material changes, Capti will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide notice by posting the updated Terms on the Public Site or through the School Services, or by other reasonable means.

Changes to these Terms will become effective as of the stated effective date. Your continued access to or use of the Public Site or School Services after the effective date of revised Terms constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

Any revision to these Terms will apply subject to any conflicting provision in an applicable signed Order, data processing agreement, or other written agreement between Capti and the Customer.

27. Accessibility

Capti strives to make the School Services accessible in accordance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA and Revised Section 508 (federal accessibility standards) standards as aspirational targets, though Capti does not warrant or guarantee that the School Services will meet any particular accessibility standard at all times. A current Accessibility Conformance Report (also known as a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template or "VPAT") is available to Customers upon request.

Part C. General Terms

28. Attorneys’ Fees

In any action, proceeding, or arbitration to enforce or interpret these Terms or arising out of or related to the Public Site or the School Services, the substantially prevailing party will be entitled to recover its reasonable attorneys’ fees, expert fees, and costs from the other party, including fees and costs incurred in any appeal or post-judgment proceeding. This entitlement is in addition to any other relief or remedy to which the substantially prevailing party may be entitled under these Terms or applicable law.

29. Privacy

Capti’s collection, use, storage, disclosure, and other processing of personal information are described in Capti’s Privacy Policy, as updated from time to time, and, where applicable, in any data processing agreement or other written agreement between Capti and the applicable Customer.

30. Warranty Disclaimer

Except as expressly stated in a signed written agreement between Capti and the applicable Customer, the School Services are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Capti disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, results, completeness, uninterrupted availability, or error-free operation.

Capti does not warrant that the School Services will improve any student skill, capability, or outcome, or that the Public Site or School Services will always be available, uninterrupted, timely, secure, or free from defects.

31. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, neither party will be liable to the other for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenues, goodwill, data, or business interruption, whether arising in contract, tort, statute, or otherwise, arising out of or related to these Terms, the Public Site, or the School Services, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Capti’s aggregate liability arising out of or related to these Terms, the Public Site, or the School Services, whether arising in contract, tort, statute, or otherwise, will not exceed the total amount paid or payable by the applicable Customer to Capti for the affected School Services under the applicable Order during the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

The limitations in this Section do not apply to:

a party’s fraud or willful misconduct;
the Customer’s payment obligations; or
either party’s indemnification obligations under Section 32.

32. Indemnification

Capti will defend the applicable Customer against any third-party claim alleging that the School Services, as provided by Capti and used by the Customer in accordance with these Terms and the applicable Order, infringe or misappropriate that third party’s United States intellectual property rights, and Capti will pay any damages finally awarded or amounts agreed in settlement by Capti resulting from such claim.

Capti will have no obligation under this Section to the extent the claim arises from:

Customer Data or other materials provided by or on behalf of the Customer or any Authorized User;
use of the School Services in combination with products, services, data, or processes not provided by Capti, if the claim would not have arisen but for that combination;
modification of the School Services by anyone other than Capti; or
use of the School Services in violation of these Terms, the applicable Order, or applicable law.

If the School Services become, or in Capti’s opinion are likely to become, subject to an infringement claim, Capti may, at its option and expense:

procure the right for the Customer to continue using the affected School Services;
replace or modify the affected School Services so that they become non-infringing without materially reducing their core functionality; or
terminate the affected School Services and refund any prepaid fees for the terminated portion of the then-current term.

This Section states Capti’s sole liability, and the Customer’s exclusive remedy, for any claim covered by this Section.

The Customer will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Capti and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any third-party claim, damage, liability, loss, cost, or expense, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising out of or related to:

Customer Data or content provided by or on behalf of the Customer or any Authorized User;
the Customer’s or any Authorized User’s use of the Public Site or School Services in violation of these Terms, the applicable Order, or applicable law; or
the Customer’s breach of these Terms or any applicable written agreement with Capti.

A party seeking indemnification under this Section must give prompt notice of the claim, permit the indemnifying party to control the defense and settlement of the claim, and provide reasonable cooperation at the indemnifying party’s expense; provided, however, that the failure to give prompt notice will not relieve the indemnifying party of its obligations under this Section except to the extent the indemnifying party is materially prejudiced by such failure. The indemnifying party may not settle any claim in a manner that admits fault or imposes ongoing obligations on the indemnified party without the indemnified party’s prior written consent, not to be unreasonably withheld, conditioned, or delayed.

33. Electronic Communications

By using the Public Site or School Services, you consent to receive communications from Capti electronically, including through email, in-product notices, or postings on the Public Site, where permitted by applicable law.

34. Notice

Except as otherwise required by law or expressly stated in these Terms, Capti may provide notices under these Terms by email, by posting on the Public Site or School Services, or by other reasonable electronic means.

Notices from Capti will be deemed given:

if sent by email, when sent to the most recent email address associated with the applicable account, provided that Capti does not receive a bounce-back or other delivery failure notice;
if posted on the Public Site or School Services, on the date of posting; and
if sent through another electronic means, on the date transmitted.

You will send legal notices to Capti at:

Charmtech Labs LLC
Attn: Legal Department
PO Box 896
Buffalo, NY 14205
Email: info@capti.com

Notices from you to Capti will be deemed given when actually received by Capti.

35. Governing Law and Venue

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Public Site, or the School Services, will be governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict of laws principles.

Subject to any contrary provision in an applicable signed written agreement between Capti and a Customer, the state and federal courts located in Erie County, New York will have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Public Site, or the School Services, and each party consents to the personal jurisdiction and venue of those courts.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, EACH PARTY KNOWINGLY, VOLUNTARILY, AND INTENTIONALLY WAIVES ANY RIGHT IT MAY HAVE TO A TRIAL BY JURY IN ANY LEGAL PROCEEDING ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS, THE PUBLIC SITE, THE SCHOOL SERVICES, OR ANY TRANSACTION CONTEMPLATED HEREBY. This waiver applies to any claim or cause of action, whether based on contract, tort, or any other legal theory. Each party certifies that no representative of the other party has represented that such party would not seek to enforce this waiver. This waiver is a material inducement for Capti to enter into these Terms.

36. Dispute Resolution and Arbitration

Informal Resolution. Before initiating any arbitration or other legal proceedings, each party agrees to attempt to resolve the dispute informally. The party asserting the dispute must send written notice to the other party describing the dispute in reasonable detail and the relief requested. The parties will have thirty (30) days from the date of that notice to attempt to resolve the dispute through good-faith negotiation. Arbitration may not commence until this thirty (30) day period has expired or the other party has affirmatively declined informal resolution in writing, whichever occurs first.

Binding Arbitration. Except as expressly provided in this Section, any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Public Site, or the School Services, or the breach, termination, enforcement, interpretation, or validity thereof (collectively, “Disputes”), will be resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration rather than in court. This agreement to arbitrate applies to all Disputes regardless of whether the claim arises in contract, tort, statute, fraud, misrepresentation, or any other legal theory.

Arbitration Rules and Administration. Arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) in accordance with its Commercial Arbitration Rules then in effect (available at www.adr.org), as modified by this Section. The arbitration will be conducted by a single neutral arbitrator. If the parties cannot agree on an arbitrator, the arbitrator will be appointed in accordance with the AAA Commercial Arbitration Rules. The arbitrator will have authority to rule on all threshold issues, including the arbitrability of any claim.

Location. Unless the parties agree otherwise in writing, arbitration proceedings will be conducted in Erie County, New York. The arbitrator may permit remote participation by any party or witness where appropriate.

Discovery. Discovery in arbitration will be limited to the following: each party may take up to three (3) depositions of fact witnesses and may request up to twenty-five (25) document requests. Any additional discovery requires the arbitrator’s express approval upon a showing of substantial need. The arbitrator will have authority to resolve all discovery disputes. The parties agree that limiting discovery in this manner is reasonable and necessary to preserve the speed and cost-effectiveness of arbitration.

Costs. Each party will bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs in connection with any arbitration, subject to the arbitrator’s authority to award fees and costs to the prevailing party as provided in Section 28 of these Terms. AAA filing fees and arbitrator compensation will be allocated in accordance with the AAA Commercial Arbitration Rules, except that Capti will not be required to advance any fees or costs on behalf of the Customer.

Arbitrator’s Decision. The arbitrator’s decision will be final and binding on both parties. The arbitrator may award the same relief that a court could award, including injunctive or declaratory relief, but only to the extent necessary to provide relief to the individual claimant and only in that claimant’s individual capacity. Judgment on the arbitration award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

CLASS ACTION WAIVER. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, EACH PARTY AGREES THAT ANY DISPUTE, CLAIM, OR CONTROVERSY SUBJECT TO ARBITRATION UNDER THIS SECTION MAY ONLY BE BROUGHT ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, COLLECTIVE, CONSOLIDATED, PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERAL, OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. THE ARBITRATOR MAY NOT CONSOLIDATE MORE THAN ONE PARTY’S CLAIMS AND MAY NOT OTHERWISE PRESIDE OVER ANY FORM OF CLASS, COLLECTIVE, OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. IF THIS CLASS ACTION WAIVER IS FOUND TO BE UNENFORCEABLE FOR ANY REASON, THEN THE ENTIRETY OF THIS SECTION 36 WILL BE DEEMED NULL AND VOID, AND THE PARTIES AGREE THAT ANY CLASS, COLLECTIVE, OR REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS WILL PROCEED IN A COURT OF COMPETENT JURISDICTION AS PROVIDED IN SECTION 35, AND NOT IN ARBITRATION.

Exceptions. Notwithstanding the foregoing, either party may: (a) bring an individual claim in small claims court if the claim qualifies under that court’s jurisdictional limits and is brought on an individual, non-class basis; and (b) seek emergency or preliminary injunctive or other equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction as necessary to protect its intellectual property rights, Confidential Information, Assessment Materials, or proprietary technology pending the outcome of arbitration, without waiving its right to arbitration on the merits of any underlying claim. Capti’s right to seek injunctive or other equitable relief is in addition to, and not in lieu of, any other rights or remedies available to Capti under these Terms or applicable law.

Opt-Out. You may opt out of this agreement to arbitrate by sending written notice of your decision to opt out to Capti at the address set forth in Section 34

Confidentiality. All arbitration proceedings, submissions, decisions, and awards will be kept confidential to the fullest extent permitted by law, except as necessary to obtain court confirmation of an arbitration award or to enforce an arbitration agreement or award.

37. Assignment

You may not assign or transfer these Terms, or any rights or obligations under these Terms, without Capti’s prior written consent, except that a Customer may assign these Terms together with an applicable Order to a successor in connection with a merger, reorganization, or sale of substantially all of its assets, provided that the assignee agrees in writing to be bound by these Terms and any applicable written agreement with Capti.

Capti may assign or transfer these Terms, in whole or in part, without restriction, including to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, reorganization, or sale of assets.

Any attempted assignment in violation of this Section is void.

38. Force Majeure

Neither party will be liable for any delay or failure to perform under these Terms, except for payment obligations, to the extent caused by events beyond that party’s reasonable control, including natural disasters, acts of government, war, terrorism, labor disputes, internet or telecommunications failures, or failures of third-party hosting or utility providers.

39. No Third-Party Beneficiaries

These Terms are for the benefit of you and Capti only and do not create any third-party beneficiary rights, except as expressly provided in Section 32.

40. Waiver and Severability

A party’s failure to enforce any provision of these Terms will not constitute a waiver of that provision or any other provision.

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by law and, if necessary, reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

41. Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any applicable signed Order, data processing agreement, or other written agreement between Capti and the applicable Customer, constitute the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter addressed herein and supersede all prior or contemporaneous understandings on that subject matter.

42. Feedback

If the Customer or any Authorized User provides Capti with suggestions, ideas, enhancement requests, recommendations, corrections, or other feedback regarding the Public Site, the School Services, or any other Capti product or service (“Feedback”), the Customer hereby assigns, and shall cause its Authorized Users to assign, to Capti all right, title, and interest in and to such Feedback, including all intellectual property rights therein, on a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free basis. This assignment is unconditional and requires no further act by either party to be effective.

Capti may use, disclose, reproduce, license, distribute, commercialize, and otherwise exploit any Feedback for any purpose, including incorporating Feedback into the School Services or other Capti products and services, without any obligation of compensation, attribution, notice, or approval to or from the Customer or any Authorized User.

Feedback is not Confidential Information of the Customer, and Capti has no confidentiality obligation with respect to any Feedback. The Customer represents and warrants that it has all rights necessary to provide any Feedback it or its Authorized Users submit, and that such Feedback does not infringe or violate the rights of any third party.

43. Survival

Any provision of these Terms that by its nature should survive termination or expiration will survive, including Sections 2, 3, 7, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21 through 23, 25, 28 through 32, 34 through 37, and 39 through 44, as well as any accrued payment obligations, indemnification obligations, confidentiality obligations, restrictions on use, obligations to cease use of the School Services, and obligations relating to Customer Data, account security, and unauthorized use.

44. Contact Information

If you have questions about these Terms, you may contact Capti at:

Charmtech Labs LLC
PO Box 896
Buffalo, NY 14205
888-533-7884
info@capti.com

Capti Global Privacy Policy | Data Protection, Student & User Rights

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:01:38 -0700

Capti Privacy Policy

Version Effective Date: 04/15/2026

1. Introduction and Key Definitions

This is the Privacy Policy of Charmtech Labs LLC, doing business as Capti ("Capti," "Company," "we," "our" or "us") for use of the capti.com website, and related online pages (including the publicly accessible portions of the website, referred to as the "Public Site," and the authenticated platform, applications, assessments, and tools made available to schools, districts, and other customers, referred to as the "School Services," and collectively, the "Services"). We want our visitors to learn about our Services, and we help educators, researchers, parents, students, and other authorized users to easily put our Services to work. Capitalized terms used but not defined in this Privacy Policy have the meanings given to them in our Terms of Service.

In this Privacy Policy, we describe the information we may collect about you through our Services (as defined in our Terms of Service), how we use that information, circumstances in which we share it, how we protect it, and the rights and choices you may have with regard to your information. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully before accessing or using our Services. By accessing or using any of our Services, you accept and agree to be bound by this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Privacy Policy, do not access or use our Services.

This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and made a part of our Terms of Service. Any capitalized terms not defined in this Privacy Policy have the definitions set forth in the Terms of Service. Any claim, dispute, or cause of action arising out of or relating to this Privacy Policy or Capti's collection, use, disclosure, or other processing of Personal Information will be subject to the Terms of Service, including the limitations of liability, warranty disclaimers, indemnification obligations, governing law, venue, dispute resolution, arbitration, and class action waiver provisions set forth therein. To the extent of any conflict between this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service, the Terms of Service will control unless a provision of this Privacy Policy is required by applicable law.

If you or the school district with which you are associated have entered into a separate written agreement with us governing the Services (such as a data sharing agreement between Capti and a school or district governing the collection, use, and disclosure of student data (a "Data Sharing Agreement"), a data processing agreement governing Capti's processing of personal data on behalf of a Customer (a "Data Processing Agreement"), or other contract), that written agreement controls to the extent of any conflict with this Privacy Policy. For customers whose agreement incorporates a specific attached or executed version of these terms, that executed version governs unless amended in writing by the parties.

In the event we add future Services that affect the terms of this Privacy Policy, we will revise accordingly. References to "you" or "your" pertain to all visitors to our public website, Authorized Users of our Services or other individuals whose data we process throughout this Privacy Policy.

Privacy Compliance Contact. Brian Ash is the Company's designated privacy compliance contact and may be reached at privacy@capti.com. Mr. Ash is responsible for directing the Company's policies and procedures for compliance with applicable privacy laws.

2. What Is Our General Approach to Your Personal Information?

We do not sell Personal Information as that term is commonly defined in applicable privacy laws. We do not share Personal Information for targeted advertising. We do not use Personal Information to train large language models or generative artificial intelligence systems; any such use is limited to de-identified and aggregated data.

We collect Personal Information only to the extent it is reasonably necessary and proportionate to provide or maintain the specific product or service you have requested. We collect or process sensitive data only where strictly necessary to provide the specific product or service requested and, where required by applicable law, only with your consent.

We use reasonable efforts to protect information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked with you or your household (your "Personal Information"). We may use de-identified and aggregated data derived from the Services for internal analytics, security, service improvement, product performance evaluation, benchmarking, and reporting purposes, provided such data does not identify, and cannot reasonably be used to identify, any individual. Where we use identifiable Personal Information for research or product development purposes beyond the scope described in this Privacy Policy, we will do so only with express consent or pursuant to a separate written agreement with the applicable Customer or individual.

We know that when users provide Personal Information to an organization, it is an act of trust. That trust is something we take seriously. We work to ensure that the Services observe compliance standards for online privacy, security, business practices, honest transactions, and availability. This Privacy Policy explains the steps we take to protect Personal Information shared with us through the Services or when you otherwise interact with us, including how we collect it, who has access to it, and what is done with it.

We maintain a data inventory that identifies the categories of Personal Information we process and the purposes for which we process it. This inventory supports our obligations under applicable privacy and data security laws.

In addition to federal privacy laws like FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), we at Capti are aware of and design our systems and controls to abide by applicable state student privacy laws, including the Student Online Personal Information Protection Acts (SOPIPA) in California and Virginia, the Student Online Personal Protection Acts (SOPPA) in Illinois and Michigan, and comprehensive state consumer data privacy laws such as the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act (MCDPA), the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act (MODPA), the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CCPA/CPRA), the Connecticut Data Privacy Act (CDPA), and similar laws in other states where we operate. We conduct data protection assessments where required by applicable law.

3. What Categories of Personal Information Do We Collect?

Depending on the nature of your relationship with Capti, the categories of Personal Information we collect and use may include the following (these are examples and may be subject to change):

Category	Description
Identity Data	Information such as your name; address; email address; telephone number; age and/or age range; grade level; account login details, including your username and password, or other account-related information; and information you provide in connection with your application to be an employee or to otherwise collaborate with us.
Contact Data	Identity Data that relates to information about how we can communicate with you, such as email, phone numbers, physical addresses, and information you provide to us when you contact us by email or otherwise communicate with us.
Location Data	Information about your general location as determined based on your IP address. We do not collect precise geolocation data.
Device/Network Data	Browsing history, search history, and information regarding your interaction with our Services (e.g., IP Address, MAC Address, SSIDs or other device identifiers or persistent identifiers), online user ID, device characteristics (such as browser/OS version), web server logs, application logs, browsing data, first-party Cookies, web beacons, clear GIFs, and pixel tags.
Commercial Data	Information about the Customer's subscription, history of purchase orders or service agreements ("Orders"), service tier, and account status; transaction and invoicing records; and similar information relating to the commercial relationship between Capti and the Customer. For individual Authorized Users, this may include information about which Services or features are accessible through the user's account.
Inference Data	Personal Information used to create a profile about you, which may include your preferences, reading or writing levels, abilities, aptitudes, and other data or analytics generated by our Services about your use of the Services.
Audio/Visual Data	Data collected if you submit audio, images, or video recordings to our Services. We do not use any such data for the specific identification of any individuals. See "Handling Audio Recordings" below for additional detail.
User Content	Unstructured or free-form data that may include any category of Personal Information, e.g., data that you give us in free-text fields such as comment boxes, content that you upload to our Public Site or School Services, answers you provide when you participate in assessments, and any other Personal Information which you may provide through or in connection with our Services.

4. Sensitive Data

Under applicable state privacy laws, certain categories of Personal Information are considered "sensitive data" and are subject to heightened protections. Depending on applicable law, the following categories of data that Capti may collect or process could be classified as sensitive:

Demographic data provided by schools or districts (e.g., race, ethnicity, disability status, free/reduced lunch status), collected only when provided by a school or district for educational purposes
Children's data (Personal Information collected from children under 13, or under 16 or 18 depending on the applicable state law)
Audio recordings of student voice (which may constitute biometric data under certain state and federal definitions; see "Handling Audio Recordings" below)
Precise geolocation data (we do not collect this)

We collect or process sensitive data only where strictly necessary to provide the specific product or service requested by the consumer or, in the case of school accounts, to fulfill the educational purpose authorized by the school or district. We do not sell sensitive data. Where required by applicable law, we obtain consent before collecting or processing sensitive data.

5. What Information Do We Collect Automatically About You?

Some information is collected automatically when you use our Services. This information may not on its own reveal your name or contact information, but it may include device and usage information, such as your IP address, browser, device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, location, information about how and when you use our Services, and other technical information. This information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of our Services, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes. We also use this information to improve our Services, to determine which features of our Services are most popular with our users, and to otherwise better understand our users' preferences. Capti limits automatic data collection on student-facing pages of the School Services to information necessary for the internal operation, security, and technical functionality of those Services, and does not use such data for marketing or advertising purposes.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

Cookies (or browser Cookies). "Cookies" are small text files that are placed on your device to help us recognize you and remember your preferences.
Web Beacons. Pages of the Services and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics.
Universal Opt-Out Mechanisms. We recognize and respond to browser-based opt-out preference signals, including the Global Privacy Control (GPC), as required by applicable state law. When we detect a valid opt-out signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of the sale of Personal Information and of targeted advertising, to the extent those activities apply. You may also exercise your opt-out rights by visiting Your Privacy Choices on our website.

6. What Information Do We Collect When You Voluntarily Provide It?

We collect Personal Information from and about you when you voluntarily provide it to us, in addition to Personal Information and other data we collect automatically when you visit the Services. Depending on the website you have accessed, or the other ways in which you interact with us, we may collect different types of information as outlined below.

Some of our Services require an account. If you are provided an account by a school, district, or other organization, or if an administrator provisions an account for you, we may collect your name, username or email address, and password or other authentication credentials. On some Services we may also collect additional Personal Information associated with your account (such as your organization, school, or other data). We use this information in connection with your account and your use of our Services. We may also use this information to contact you regarding the Services you are using and other Company Services we believe would be of interest to you.

Any user of our Services wishing to obtain support must provide an email address. Without this information we cannot answer your questions. When submitting a support question to us you must not only provide a valid email address, but also first and last name, US state if applicable, country, role, and your specified request. Some of our Services offer multiple levels of access based on the Customer’s configuration or subscription, which may be free or paid. Differences between levels of access may require corresponding differences in data collection practices.
If you are an administrator or other representative responsible for a Customer's account with Capti, you may be required to provide a valid email address, password, and additional information such as role, organization name, country, and US state. This information is used to establish and manage the Customer's account and to communicate regarding the Services.
We use Intuit QuickBooks to bill administrators directly for our Services. Note that qualifying educators in partner states can subscribe to some of our Services for free and thus without the need to provide billing information. Authorized Users may voluntarily submit additional Personal Information, like their first and last name, into their profile information and select mailing lists to which they wish to subscribe.

We may offer limited time, seasonal, early or limited access, special purpose, or demonstration versions of our Services. In such cases we may collect additional information, tied to the Authorized User's email, role, country, and state. Where applicable, we may permit Authorized Users to provide student data in order to customize the Authorized User's use of the offered Services. Some such Services allow Authorized Users to provide:

Student name or nickname
Current grade level
Class assignment
Ability level (e.g., in reading, writing, etc.)
School district or state
Demographic information (sex, race, IEP, free and reduced lunches, etc.)
Performance measurement results

Paid Subscriptions and Financial Information

If you need to submit a payment to us via credit or debit card, we use Intuit QuickBooks for invoice payment. Intuit QuickBooks processes credit and debit cards via the QuickBooks website; we have no access to card information. We encourage you to review the Intuit QuickBooks Privacy Policy to learn about how they manage your data.

In any event, when you enter into a paid subscription for one of our Services, sensitive credit card data is exchanged using direct and indirect communication between these payment processors and you. We do not collect, control, see, or store any of the card data exchanged with these payment processors.

Email Communications

If you communicate with us via email, we may retain copies of those communications, including their content and any attachments, in our communication and customer relationship management systems (e.g., email systems and CRM platforms). Users should avoid including sensitive personal information in email communications. We do not request such information via email, but if it is provided by a user, it may be stored and processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Service Form Inquiry

Certain pages on some of our Services enable you to submit inquiries or requests to us. These Services collect Personal Information when users complete an inquiry or request for more information using our online form. These forms typically collect the following information: first and last name, phone number, email address, organization name, organization type, and areas of interest. We may share this information with our third-party service providers, including storing the information in cloud-based contact management systems, and providing the information to third parties who assist us with our email marketing and other communications.

Handling Audio Recordings

Some of our Services enable users to submit audio recordings, e.g., audio notes, voiceover, or speech analysis (collectively, "Audio Content"). These Services may enable users to record themselves reading a presented passage or to upload an audio file of themselves or others reading. When we collect oral reading samples, data collected may include the reader's grade (if a student), date and time of the recording, and prior ability information used to calculate current oral reading ability. Information we send back as a result of the analysis may also be linked to data or files retained in our system.

We use a third-party automated speech analysis provider to process audio recordings. As of the date of this Privacy Policy, our provider is Microsoft. Our provider processes audio in real time and does not retain audio recordings after processing. Capti retains audio recordings on its own servers so that educators can review student reading sessions.

Voice recordings and biometric data

Student voice recordings may be considered biometric identifiers under certain federal and state laws, including revised COPPA (which includes "voiceprints" in the definition of Personal Information). We do not process voice recordings for the purpose of identifying any individual. We do not extract voiceprints, create voice templates, or use voice data for biometric identification or authentication. Voice recordings are used solely to assess oral reading fluency and provide educational results to the student's educator.

We do not use identifiable audio recordings for product improvement, model training, or any purpose other than delivering assessment results and supporting educator review of student reading sessions. Any use of audio data for product research or improvement is performed only on deidentified and aggregated data that cannot be linked back to an individual student.

Children's and Adult Information Collected

Children's Personal Information is generally provided to us by schools or districts, teachers or parents, rather than collected directly from children; However, children may provide Personal Information directly through use of the Services, such as when recording their voice for oral reading assessments or entering responses in free-form text fields.

School accounts

If you are logging in through a school or district facilitated program, the school or district has authorized us to collect and process student Personal Information in connection with the educational services we provide. Under FERPA, the school or district designates us as a "school official" with a legitimate educational interest. Under COPPA, the school or district acts as the parent's agent for purposes of providing consent on behalf of parents of children under 13. Because the school is acting as the parent's agent, we provide the school or district with full notice of our data collection, use, and disclosure practices, including this Privacy Policy and the terms of our Data Sharing Agreement, so that the school can make an informed authorization on behalf of parents. We collect and use children's Personal Information through school accounts solely for the educational purposes authorized by the school or district and for no other commercial purpose. We do not need to obtain consent directly from parents for school-mediated accounts, provided the school has authorized the collection for educational purposes.

Researchers and Non-School Organizations

The term "Customer" includes researchers, universities, and other organizations that access the School Services pursuant to an Order or other written agreement with Capti. Where a Customer's use of the School Services involves the collection or submission of Personal Information from research subjects or other individuals, the Customer is solely responsible for obtaining all consents, approvals, and authorizations required by applicable law (including without limitation COPPA, FERPA, HIPAA, applicable IRB requirements, and any other federal or state law governing the collection of Personal Information from human subjects) before submitting such information to Capti. Capti relies entirely on the Customer's representations that all required consents have been obtained and all applicable legal requirements have been satisfied. Capti shall have no liability arising out of or relating to the Customer's failure to obtain required consents or comply with applicable law in connection with the collection or submission of research subject data.

If you access the Services other than through a school or district facilitated program (for example, as an independent researcher), you are responsible for obtaining any consents required by applicable law before providing Personal Information of research subjects or other individuals to Capti. Capti will process such data in accordance with this Privacy Policy and any applicable written agreement between Capti and you. If you believe that Personal Information of a child under the age of 13 has been provided to Capti without consent, please contact us at privacy@capti.com.

Information Collected from Children Under Age 13

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and its rules (collectively, "COPPA") require us to inform parents and legal guardians (as used in this policy, "parents") about our practices for collecting, using, and disclosing Personal Information from children under the age of 13 ("children"). It also requires us to obtain verifiable consent from a child's parent for certain collection, use, and disclosure of the child's Personal Information. Please see our Children's Privacy Policy Supplement below for information about the Personal Information that we collect from or about children under age 13.

7. How Do We Use Your Personal Information?

We use Personal Information we collect to:

Provide, maintain, and improve our Services
Process transactions and send related information
Respond to your comments, questions, and requests, and provide customer service
Communicate with you about products, services, and events offered by us, and provide news and information we think will be of interest to you (you may opt out of marketing communications at any time)
Monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activities in connection with our Services
Detect, investigate, and prevent fraudulent transactions, abuse, and other illegal activities, and protect the rights and property of Capti and others
Comply with legal obligations
Deliver assessment results and support educator review of student performance

We do not use Personal Information collected from or about students ("Student Data") for targeted advertising, profiling for commercial purposes, sale to third parties, or training of large language models or generative AI systems. Student Data is a subset of Customer Data (as defined in the Terms of Service) and is subject to the same terms, conditions, and protections applicable to Customer Data under this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service.

License to Process Data. By using the Services or submitting data to Capti, you grant Capti the rights described in the Terms of Service to host, store, process, transmit, display, and otherwise use your data solely as necessary to provide, maintain, support, secure, and operate the Services. All Customer Data is processed subject to both this Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service. For school and district accounts, the Customer grants this license on behalf of itself and all of its Authorized Users, including students and educators whose data is submitted through the Customer's account.

Professional Development Services. Capti may offer Professional Development Services, which may include training sessions, data review sessions, coaching, and related support activities. In the course of delivering Professional Development Services, Capti personnel may access Customer Data, including Student Data, solely as necessary to provide the requested services. Such access is subject to the same protections applicable to other processing of Personal Information under this Privacy Policy. Professional Development Services are governed by the applicable Order and the Terms of Service, which control in the event of any conflict with this Privacy Policy.

Where the Customer's use of the School Services involves children under the age of 13, the Customer is solely responsible for providing appropriate notice to parents and legal guardians regarding the School Services and for ensuring that any required parental consent has been obtained, or that the Customer has authority to act as the parent's agent for consent purposes under COPPA. By authorizing children under 13 to access the School Services, the Customer represents and warrants to Capti that it has provided such notice, obtained such consent, or has the legal authority to act on behalf of parents for this purpose. Capti relies on the Customer's authorization and representations regarding parental notice and consent and shall have no liability arising from the Customer's failure to provide required notice or obtain required consent.

Capti does not use Customer Data or Student Data to train large language models, generative artificial intelligence systems, or other machine learning models. Third-party artificial intelligence providers engaged by Capti to deliver features that use automated or AI-assisted processing ("Automated Features") are contractually prohibited from using Customer Data or Student Data for model training, fine-tuning, or any purpose other than performing the specific services for which they are engaged. Any use of data in connection with AI-related research, benchmarking, or service improvement is performed exclusively on de-identified and aggregated data that cannot reasonably be used to identify any individual, as further described in this Agreement and the Privacy Policy.

8. Information Transfer and Disclosure

We may share Personal Information in the following circumstances:

Service Providers. We share Personal Information with third-party service providers who perform services on our behalf, such as hosting, data storage, payment processing, automated speech analysis, customer support, and analytics. These providers are contractually required to use Personal Information only to perform the services we have engaged them to provide and to maintain appropriate security measures. We obtain written assurances from each service provider that collects or maintains children's Personal Information that the provider will employ reasonable measures to maintain the confidentiality, security, and integrity of such information.
Schools and Districts. For education accounts, we may share student data with the school or district that authorized the student's use of our Services, including assessment results, usage data, and other information relevant to the educational purpose.
Legal Requirements. We may disclose Personal Information if required to do so by law or legal process, such as to comply with any court order or subpoena, or to respond to any government or regulatory request.
Protection of Rights. We may disclose Personal Information if we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Charmtech Labs LLC, our customers, or others.
Business Transfers. If Charmtech Labs LLC is involved in a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of its assets, we may transfer Personal Information to the buyer or other successor. In the case of student data, any successor will be bound by the same restrictions on use and disclosure that apply to us under our agreements with schools and districts.

We do not sell Personal Information. We do not share Personal Information for targeted advertising.

Third-Party Service Providers and Data Sharing

The following table identifies our principal third-party service providers, the categories of Personal Information shared with each, and the purpose of the sharing. Unless otherwise noted, the providers listed below support the School Services and process data in connection with the delivery of those Services:

Provider	Categories of Data Shared	Purpose
Microsoft	Audio recordings (student voice)	Automated speech analysis for oral reading fluency assessment; real-time processing with no retention by Microsoft
Intuit QuickBooks	Financial data, identity/contact data (administrator billing)	Invoicing and payment processing
Google	Identity data (authentication credentials), student roster (where organization uses Google rostering)	Single sign-on authentication and rostering data (provided by Google to Capti; Capti does not transmit Student Data to Google); rostering data shared with authorized Company personnel and educators
Hubspot	Identity data, contact data, communications content (including emails, attachments)	Customer relationship management, communication tracking, and support
Zoom	Identity data, student roster	Student data review sessions with educators
Apple	Identity data, student roster	iCloud backups
Microsoft	Identity data, student roster	OneDrive backups
Slack	Identity data, student roster	Internal communication and collaboration could reference student data
Amazon Web Services (AWS)	Student Data, including identity data, student performance data, and user-generated content	Cloud hosting, storage, and infrastructure services supporting the operation and delivery of the Services
OpenAI	Identity data	AI-assisted scoring of student written responses. Students are instructed not to include Personal Information in free-form responses; however, inadvertent disclosure may occur. Capti's agreement with OpenAI prohibits OpenAI from using API inputs to train its models. Capti does not use student responses for AI training.
Clever	Identity data (authentication credentials), student roster (where organization uses Clever rostering)	Single sign-on authentication and rostering data (provided by Clever to Capti; Capti does not transmit Student Data to Clever) rostering data shared with authorized Organization personnel and educators
Schoology	Identity data (authentication credentials), student roster (where organization uses Schoology rostering)	Single sign-on authentication and rostering data (provided by Clever to Schoology; Capti does not transmit Student Data to Schoology) rostering data shared with authorized Organization personnel and educators
ClassLink	Identity data (authentication credentials), student roster (where organization uses ClassLink rostering)	Single sign-on authentication and rostering data (provided by ClassLink to Capti; Capti does not transmit Student Data to ClassLink) rostering data shared with authorized Organization personnel and educators
Metametrics	Assessment response data, student identifiers	Lexile scoring and assessment validation services
ETS	Assessment response data, student identifiers	Assessment scoring and validation services

We may update this list from time to time. If you would like a current list of the specific third parties to whom we have disclosed your Personal Information, you may request one by contacting us at privacy@capti.com.

9. Education Records and FERPA

When Capti receives student data from a school or district, that data may constitute "education records" under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). With respect to education records:

We perform an institutional service or function that the school or district would otherwise use its own employees to perform.
We operate under the direct control of the school or district with respect to the use and maintenance of education records.
We use personally identifiable information from education records only for the purposes authorized by the school or district.
We do not re-disclose personally identifiable information from education records to any other party without the prior written consent of the parent or eligible student, except as authorized by the school or district consistent with FERPA.
We will ensure that all education records in our possession and in the possession of any subcontractors or agents to which we may have transferred education records are destroyed or returned to the school or district, under the direction of the school or district, when the records are no longer needed for their specified purpose or at the request of the school or district.
We will not make material changes to the handling of education records under a school or district agreement without the school or district's written consent. The school or district retains authority to direct how education records are used and maintained.

Any education records held by us will be made available to the school or district upon request. Any retained Personal Information will remain subject to the restrictions on sharing and use outlined in this Privacy Policy and in the applicable agreement with the school or district for as long as it resides with us.

10. Social Media Features

Our Public Site (capti.com) may include social media features, such as sharing buttons or interactive widgets. These features may collect your IP address and which page you are visiting and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing them.

These social media features are not present on pages of our School Services. Students using our assessment or instructional tools do not encounter third-party social media tracking.

11. How Long Do We Keep Personal Information?

We retain Personal Information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, subject to applicable legal requirements and any separate written agreement with a school, district, or other customer. Personal Information may not be retained indefinitely. Specific retention practices by data category:

Data Category	Retention Period
Student account data (identity, contact, performance data)	For the duration of the school or district's active account with Capti. Following termination or non-renewal of the account, Capti may retain student data for up to one (1) year solely to permit account reactivation, retrieval of historical assessment data by the school or district, compliance with a pending data request, or resolution of any dispute. At the conclusion of that period, or within forty-five (45) days of the school or district's written request, Capti will delete or return such data in accordance with our standard procedures.
Audio recordings (student voice recordings from oral reading assessments)	For the duration of the school or district's active account with Capti, to allow educators to review student reading sessions. Following termination or non-renewal, Capti may retain audio recordings for up to one (1) year solely to permit account reactivation or retrieval by the school or district. At the conclusion of that period, or earlier upon the school or district's written request, Capti will delete such recordings. Audio sent to our speech analysis provider (Microsoft) is processed in real time and is not retained by that provider after processing.
Educator and administrator account data	For as long as the account is active. Following termination or non-renewal of the associated school or district account, Capti may retain educator and administrator account data for up to one (1) year to permit account reactivation. Deleted upon request or at the conclusion of the retention period.
Payment and billing data	We do not store credit card data. Invoice and transaction records are retained as required for tax and accounting purposes.
Automatically collected data (Cookies, device data, logs)	Retained for up to 24 months for analytics and security purposes, then deleted or aggregated.
Support inquiries and form submissions	Retained in Capti's support systems (including email, CRM records, and issue tracking platforms) for as long as reasonably necessary for support, quality assurance, and legal compliance purposes. Support communications may be retained indefinitely in archived form.

We do not retain Personal Information that is no longer relevant and reasonably necessary in relation to the purposes for which it was collected and processed, unless retention is required by law or permitted under a specific legal exception.

We will ensure that all Personal Information that constitutes an education record under FERPA in our possession and in the possession of any subcontractors or agents to which we may have transferred education records is destroyed or returned to the school/district under the direction of the school/district when the records are no longer needed for their specified purpose, or at the request of the school/district.

12. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on where you live and subject to applicable law, you may have some or all of the following rights with respect to your Personal Information:

Access. You may have the right to know what Personal Information we have collected about you, including the categories of Personal Information, the sources, the purposes for collecting it, and the categories of third parties with whom we have shared it.
Specific Third Parties. You may have the right to request a list of the specific third parties to whom we have disclosed your Personal Information.
Copy. You may have the right to receive a copy of the Personal Information we hold about you in a portable format.
Correction. You may have the right to request that we correct inaccurate Personal Information.
Deletion. You may have the right to request that we delete Personal Information we hold about you, subject to certain exceptions required by law.
Opt-Out of Sale and Targeted Advertising. We do not sell Personal Information or use it for targeted advertising. If we change this practice in the future, we will provide a clear mechanism for you to opt out.
Opt-Out of Profiling. You may have the right to opt out of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you.
Right to Question Profiling. If we engage in profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects concerning you, you may have the right to be informed of the reason for a specific profiling decision, to be informed of the actions you can take to secure a different decision, to review the Personal Information used in the profiling, to correct inaccuracies in that data, and to have the profiling decision re-evaluated based on corrected data.
Limit Use of Sensitive Personal Information. You may have the right to direct us to limit our use of sensitive Personal Information to what is necessary to perform the services you have requested. We use sensitive data only for that purpose.
Limitation of Processing. You may have the right to object to or limit the manner in which we process some of your Personal Information.
Opt-Out of Marketing. All individuals have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications from Capti at any time. You may exercise this right by clicking the "unsubscribe" link in emails we send you, or by emailing privacy@capti.com.
No Discrimination. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

No Marketing to Children

We do not market to children.

Exercising Your Rights

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at privacy@capti.com. You will be required to verify your identity before we fulfill your request. We may require that you provide the email address we have on file for you (and verify that you can access that email account) as well as additional information we have on file, in order to verify your identity.

Authorized Agents

You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. If an agent submits a request on your behalf, we may require: (a) written authorization signed by you, (b) verification of the agent's identity, and (c) direct confirmation from you that you authorized the agent. We reserve the right to deny a request from an agent who does not provide sufficient proof of authorization.

For education accounts, parents and eligible students should direct rights requests through the school or district, which may in turn direct those requests to us. To the extent Personal Information constitutes "education records" under FERPA, that information may be exempt from certain state consumer privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act and similar state statutes. Rights regarding such information are governed by FERPA and are exercised through the school or district, not directly through Capti.

Response to Your Requests

We will respond to your request within 45 days of receipt. If we need additional time, we will notify you of the extension and the reason for it within the initial 45-day period. We may extend the response period by up to an additional 45 days where reasonably necessary. Information provided in response to a consumer request will be provided free of charge, up to twice per year.

When We May Decline a Request

We may decline to act on a request if we are unable to verify your identity, if the request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, if applicable law requires or permits us to retain the data, or if the data falls within a legal exemption (such as data necessary to complete a transaction you requested, data required for legal compliance, or data subject to other applicable legal protections). When we decline a request, we will not disclose certain sensitive information (such as Social Security numbers, government-issued identification numbers, financial account numbers, account passwords, or biometric data) in our response, but we will inform you whether we have collected such information. If we decline your request in whole or in part, we will inform you of the reasons for the decision.

Right to Appeal

If we decline to act on your request, you have the right to appeal that decision. To submit an appeal, contact us at privacy@capti.com with the subject line "Privacy Rights Appeal." The appeal process is also available through [Your Privacy Rights] on our website. We will respond to your appeal within 45 days, including a written explanation of the reasons for our decision. If your appeal is denied, we will provide you with information on how to contact your state's Attorney General or other applicable regulator to submit a complaint. We maintain records of all appeals and our responses for at least 24 months and will provide a copy to the applicable state regulator upon request.

Postings by Minors

Users of our Services under the age of 18 in certain jurisdictions have the right to require that we delete any content they have posted on one of our Services.

Information for California Residents

California residents may have additional rights under CCPA/CPRA, including the right to know specific pieces of Personal Information collected, the right to request deletion, the right to opt out of sale or sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising, and the right to limit the use of sensitive Personal Information. We do not sell or share Personal Information for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not offer financial incentives related to the collection of Personal Information. California residents may also request a list of Personal Information we have disclosed to third parties for direct marketing purposes during the preceding calendar year, or confirm that no such disclosure has been made. To exercise any California-specific right, contact us at privacy@capti.com.

13. Data Security

We maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect Personal Information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. These safeguards include encryption of data in transit and at rest, role-based access controls, regular security assessments, and staff training.

If you are provided with login credentials for any of our Services, you will be asked to select or use a password to help protect your Personal Information. You should never share your password with anyone. The Company will never ask you for your password in a phone call or email. We also offer for your convenience single sign-on via various Service Providers, including Google, Clever, ClassLink, Schoology, and others.

We cannot guarantee that Personal Information will never be accessed, disclosed, or altered in a manner inconsistent with this Privacy Policy (for example, as a result of unauthorized acts by third parties that violate applicable law or our Terms of Service).

14. Data Breach Notification

In the event of a breach of security involving Personal Information, we will comply with applicable federal and state breach notification laws, including providing notice to affected individuals, schools or districts, and regulators as required. We will investigate the incident, take steps to mitigate harm, and implement measures to prevent recurrence.

15. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we will post the updated Privacy Policy on our Public Site and update the "Updated" date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

If we make a material change to this Privacy Policy or to our data practices, we will notify affected consumers through reasonable electronic measures (taking into account available technology and the nature of the relationship) and provide a reasonable opportunity for consumers to withdraw consent to any further materially different collection, processing, or transfer of previously collected Personal Information under the changed policy.

Material changes to the handling of education records collected under a school or district agreement will not take effect with respect to data collected under that agreement without the school or district's written consent.

16. Survival

Termination or expiration of your use of the Services, or of any agreement between Capti and a Customer, does not terminate those provisions of this Privacy Policy that by their nature should survive. The following provisions survive indefinitely: (a) Capti's right to retain Personal Information during any applicable post-termination retention period and to delete or return such data in accordance with Section 11 of this Privacy Policy; (b) Capti's right to use de-identified and aggregated data derived from the Services for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, which right is perpetual and survives any termination; (c) all disclaimers, limitations of liability, and warranty exclusions incorporated into this Privacy Policy from the Terms of Service; (d) the obligations of data security and breach notification described in Sections 13 and 14, to the extent any obligation arises from events occurring prior to or in connection with the termination; (e) the incorporation of the Terms of Service, including all survival provisions set forth therein, which apply equally to claims arising under or related to this Privacy Policy; and (f) Customer obligations regarding the confidentiality of Capti's proprietary assessment content, test items, scoring rubrics, and related materials ("Assessment Materials") and other proprietary information of Capti, as set forth in the Terms of Service.

Survival of the provisions described above does not extend any affirmative right of Capti to actively process Personal Information beyond the post-termination retention period described in Section 11. Following that period, Capti's data processing rights with respect to identifiable Personal Information cease except as required by applicable law.

17. Contact Us

If at any time you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us:

Privacy Compliance Contact: Brian Ash Email: privacy@capti.com Mail: Charmtech Labs LLC, PO Box 896, Buffalo, NY 14205

Privacy Notice for Children Under the Age of 13

Updated 04/06/2026

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and its rules (collectively, "COPPA") require us to inform parents and legal guardians (as used in this notice, "parents") about our practices for collecting, using, and disclosing Personal Information from children under the age of 13 ("children"). It also requires us to obtain verifiable consent from a child's parent for certain collection, use, and disclosure of the child's Personal Information.

This notice covers:
The types of information we may collect from children
How we use the information we collect
Our practices for disclosing that information
Our practices for notifying and obtaining parents' consent when we collect Personal Information from children, including how a parent may revoke consent
All operators that collect or maintain information from children through the Services
Our data retention policy for children's Personal Information

This notice supplements the Capti Privacy Policy above. Only the general Privacy Policy applies to teens and adults. Terms defined in the general Privacy Policy have the same meanings when used in this notice.

1. Information We Collect from Children

Children can access many parts of the Public Site and its content without providing us with Personal Information. However, access to the School Services requires an account and involves the collection of certain information, including Personal Information. In addition, we use certain technologies, such as Cookies, to automatically collect information from our users (including children) when they use the School Services.

We only collect as much information about a child as is reasonably necessary for the child to participate in an activity, and we do not condition participation on the disclosure of more Personal Information than is reasonably necessary.

Under COPPA, "Personal Information" collected from children includes, among other things, names, email addresses, screen names, persistent identifiers, photographs, audio files containing a child's voice, and biometric identifiers such as voiceprints. Student voice recordings collected through our oral reading fluency assessments constitute Personal Information under COPPA. We do not use voice recordings to identify individual children or extract voiceprints; they are used solely to assess oral reading fluency and deliver educational results.

2. Information We Collect Directly

A child's account is created by a school administrator, teacher, or other authorized adult. The account may include the following information: email (which need not be a real email address for school accounts), name or nickname and password or authentication method. The child does not self-register for our Services.

Certain features of our Services enable Authorized Users to record their voice, such as Audio Content. Creation and use of audio content features results in the collection and recording of a voice audio file. We use audio files generated from Audio Content only to assess students' oral reading (automatically or by the educator) and to provide results to the student's educator. We do not use identifiable audio files for product improvement, model training, or any other purpose. We retain audio files for the duration of the education account's active relationship with Capti, or we will delete them at any time upon the request of the school.

3. Automatic Information Collection and Tracking

We use technology to automatically collect information from our users, including children, when they access and navigate through the Public Site and use certain of its features. The information we collect through these technologies may include:

One or more persistent identifiers that can be used to recognize a user over time and across different websites and online services
Information that identifies a device's general location based on IP address

Where we collect persistent identifiers from children under the internal operations exception to COPPA's consent requirements, we use those identifiers solely for the following specific internal operations: supporting the internal functionality of the Services, maintaining and analyzing the technical functioning of the Services, and ensuring the security of the Services. We do not use persistent identifiers collected from children to contact a specific individual, for behavioral advertising, to amass a profile on a specific individual, cross‑site targeted advertising, or for any other purpose.

We also may combine non-Personal Information we collect through these technologies with Personal Information about you or your child that we collect online.

For information about our automatic information collection practices, including how you can opt out of certain information collection, see Section 5 of our general Privacy Policy.

4. How We Use Your Child's Information

We use the Personal Information we collect from your child to:

Register the child with the Services
Communicate with the child about activities or features of the Services that may be of interest
Track the child's performance in assessments and other educational activities
Deliver assessment results to the child's educator

We use the information we collect automatically through technology and other non-Personal Information we collect to improve our Services and to ensure that they perform as expected. Any such use involving children's data is performed only on deidentified and aggregated data.

5. Our Practices for Disclosing Children's Information

We do not share, sell, rent, or transfer children's Personal Information other than as described in this section.

We may disclose aggregated information about many of our users, and information that does not identify any individual or device. In addition, we may disclose children's Personal Information:

To third parties we use to support the internal operations of our Services and who are bound by contractual or other obligations to use the information only for such purposes and to keep the information confidential. We have obtained written assurances from each such third party that it will employ reasonable measures to maintain the confidentiality, security, and integrity of children's Personal Information. As of the date of this Privacy Policy, these third parties include:

Third Party	Data Received	Purpose
Microsoft	Audio recordings (student voice)	Automated speech analysis; real-time processing, no retention

Clever, Schoology, Google, and ClassLink, where the school or district uses those services for single sign-on or rostering, receive identity data and student roster data as necessary for authentication and account provisioning. These providers are bound by their own data protection commitments to schools and districts.
To the school or district that authorized the child's use of our Services.
If we are required to do so by law or legal process, such as to comply with any court order or subpoena or to respond to any government or regulatory request.
If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Charmtech Labs LLC, our customers, or others, including to protect the safety of a child, protect the safety and security of the Services, or enable us to take precautions against liability.
To law enforcement agencies or for an investigation related to public safety.

In addition, if Charmtech Labs LLC is involved in a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of its assets, we may transfer the Personal Information we have collected or maintain to the buyer or other successor. Any successor will be bound by the same restrictions on use of children's data that apply to us.

6. Parental Consent and Rights

School-Mediated Consent. Where a child accesses our Services through a school or district facilitated program, the school or district acts as the parent's agent for purposes of providing consent under COPPA. This means the school or district may authorize us to collect and use children's Personal Information for educational purposes without requiring us to obtain consent directly from each parent.

To support the school's ability to act as an informed agent on behalf of parents, we provide the school or district with full notice of our data collection, use, and disclosure practices before collecting any Personal Information from children through a school account. This notice includes this Privacy Policy, the terms of our Data Sharing Agreement or other applicable contract, and any supplemental disclosures necessary for the school to understand how children's data will be handled. The school or district then authorizes us to collect and use student Personal Information solely for the educational purposes described in our agreement.

We collect and use children's Personal Information through school accounts only for the educational purposes authorized by the school or district and for no other commercial purpose. The school or district is responsible for its own obligations to parents under FERPA, including informing parents about the services used in the school and including Capti in the school's annual FERPA notification where applicable.

Parental Rights. Parents may:

Review the Personal Information we have collected from their child
Direct us to delete the child's Personal Information
Refuse to allow any further collection or use of the child's information
Revoke consent previously provided for the collection, use, or disclosure of the child's information

Upon revocation of consent, we will cease collection of new data immediately and will delete applicable data no later than 45 days after receipt of the request.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@capti.com. For school accounts, parents should first contact the child's school or district, as the school is the party that authorized the data collection and is best positioned to direct changes to its students' data.

7. Operators That Collect or Maintain Information from Children

The following entities collect or maintain information from children through our Services:

Charmtech Labs LLC PO Box 896, Buffalo, NY 14205 privacy@capti.com

Microsoft Corporation (automated speech analysis provider; processes audio in real time without retaining audio files after processing)

8. Data Security for Children's Information

We maintain a written information security program that includes safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the Personal Information collected from children and to Capti's size, complexity, and the nature and scope of our activities. This program includes:

Designation of one or more employees to coordinate the program
Identification and at least annual assessment of internal and external risks to the confidentiality, security, and integrity of children's Personal Information
Design, implementation, and maintenance of safeguards to control identified risks, taking into account the volume and sensitivity of the data and the likelihood of unauthorized compromise
Regular testing and monitoring of safeguard effectiveness
At least annual evaluation and modification of the program

These safeguards include encryption of data in transit and at rest, role-based access controls, regular security assessments, and employee training. For additional detail, see Section 13 of the general Privacy Policy.

9. Data Retention Policy for Children's Information

We retain children's Personal Information only as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the specific purpose for which the information was collected. Children's Personal Information may not be retained indefinitely.

Data Category	Purpose of Collection	Business Need for Retention	Retention Timeframe
Registration data (name or nickname, email, password)	Register child with the Services and provide access to educational features	Needed for the duration of the child's active use of the Services through the school account	For the duration of the school or district's active account. Following termination or non-renewal, Capti may retain such data for up to one (1) year solely to permit account reactivation or data retrieval. Deleted or returned to the school/district at the conclusion of that period or earlier upon request.
Assessment data (item-response data, scores, performance results, grade level, ability data)	Compute and Deliver assessment results and track educational progress	Needed to provide longitudinal educational results to the child's educator	For the duration of the school or district's active account. Following termination or non-renewal, Capti may retain such data for up to one (1) year solely to permit account reactivation, retrieval of historical assessment data, or compliance with a pending data request. Deleted or returned to the school/district at the conclusion of that period or earlier upon request.
Audio recordings (student voice from oral reading assessments)	Assess oral reading fluency and provide results to the child's educator	Retained so educators can review student reading sessions and track progress over time	For the duration of the school or district's active account. Following termination or non-renewal, Capti may retain audio recordings for up to one (1) year solely to permit account reactivation or retrieval by the school or district. Deleted at the conclusion of that period or earlier upon the school/district's request. Audio sent to our automated speech analysis provider (Microsoft) is processed in real time and not retained by that provider after processing.
Demographic data (if provided by school/district, e.g., grade, sex, race, free/reduced lunch)	Support educational assessment configuration and reporting	Needed to deliver assessment features that depend on grade-level or demographic context	Deleted or returned to the school/district upon termination of the school/district relationship or upon the school/district's earlier written request
Automatically collected data (persistent identifiers, device data, logs)	Support internal operations, maintain security, ensure technical functionality	Needed for ongoing security monitoring and technical troubleshooting	Retained for up to 24 months, then deleted or aggregated so that it no longer identifies an individual child

A copy of our written data retention schedule is available to schools, districts, and parents upon request. Contact privacy@capti.com.

When children's Personal Information is no longer needed for its specified purpose, or upon the request of the school or district, we will delete or return it. We will ensure that all education records in the possession of any subcontractors or agents are similarly deleted or returned.

Security & Privacy at Capti | SOC 2, FERPA & Data Protection

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:23:18 -0700

Security and Privacy at Capti

At Capti, our team is committed to upholding strict security and privacy standards to safeguard your data. We ensure full compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and industry best practices, while simultaneously delivering exceptional service.

AICPA SOC 2 Audit

Capti has successfully completed SOC 2 Type II examination, covering security, confidentiality, and availability. Report is available upon request.

1EdTech Data Privacy Certificate

Capti has successfully completed conformance testing for 1EdTech Data Privacy certification.

Registration Number: IMSP1ci2024W1

Thoughtful Policies

Our security policies are structured around strict access control and consistent application of security controls. We enforce least privilege and need-to-know principles. Our security posture is dynamic, with continuous improvement embedded into our operational model, ensuring resilience against emerging threats.

Proactive Product Security

Our product security strategy encompasses regular audits, rigorous vulnerability scanning and deep code analysis to identify and mitigate risks. We use services of a PCI-approved scanning vendor Sysnet Global Solutions for comprehensive assessments, ensuring Capti is fortified against known and emerging vulnerabilities.

Comprehensive Data Safeguards

To prevent unauthorized access, we encrypt data at rest and in transit. We use TLS 1.2 or higher everywhere data is transmitted. Our encryption keys are managed via AWS Key Management System (KMS).

Data Privacy by Design

We maintain regulatory compliance with relevant data protection laws and frameworks, including FERPA, through comprehensive data governance practices. Our Privacy Policy is crafted with transparency in mind, detailing our data processing activities and the controls available to our users to manage their personal information.

Transparent Reporting

We provide detailed compliance and security reports, including SOC 2, VPAT, HECVAT, and 1EdTech Data Privacy Certificate, upon request. These documents offer insights into our security infrastructure and compliance posture, underscoring our commitment to transparency.

Trust Through Excellence

Our dedication to maintaining robust security and privacy standards has garnered trust with our customers that include K-12 and higher education institutions, as well as literacy research groups.

Capti Science of Reading Webinars & Events | Literacy Conferences

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:09:21 -0700

Webinars and Events

Stay updated with our latest events, including webinars, conferences, and business competitions. We would love to see you at our next conference or webinar!

No Upcoming Webinars & Events Yet

Stay connected for future announcements!

National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA)

June 21-24, 2026

Austin, Texas

Come visit Capti at booth 309 to check out ReadBasix.

Visit website

Attendees

Dr. Yevgen Borodin

CEO

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Director of Literacy and Research

Dr. Raven Cromwell

Literacy Specialist
It Takes a League to Leave a Legacy

May 14, 2026

Mansfield, OH

Come visit us at TRL OH Literacy Symposium May 14th, at 890 West Fourth Street Mansfield Oh 44906

Visit website

Attendees

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Dr. Raven Cromwell

Literacy Specialist
Leveling Up: Our Journey with Capti ReadBasix at Marshall Middle School

April 16th, 3pm EST

Join us for an inspiring look at how Marshall Middle School transformed its approach to student reading growth. After identifying a need for a more specialized system to support adolescent literacy, the team used Capti ReadBasix data to pinpoint specific gaps in Word Recognition and Decoding.

This webinar details the successful implementation of Marshall’s 30-minute daily FLEX period, a dedicated window for consistent, targeted interventions. The results speak for themselves: by the end of the third quarter, the percentage of students requiring support in foundational decoding skills dropped from 50% to just 18%.

Visit website

Speakers

Beth Ritter

Director of Teaching and Learning, Marshall Public Schools

Sara Welch

Instructional Coach, Marshall Middle School

Peggy Reynolds

Principal, Marshall Middle School

Bennett Appel

Assistant Principal Marshall Middle School
SoMLA Conference, 2026

March 24-25, 2026

Townson, MD

Visit website

Systems That Drive Strong Readers: Using Diagnostic Assessment to Strengthen MTSS Across a District

March 25, 8:00am - 8:50am, Grason Room

Summary: Learn how a district's literacy leadership aligned MTSS, reading science, and diagnostic data—creating a collaborative, school-wide model for adolescent literacy success.

Speakers

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Brady Barnhart

District Literacy Achievement Coordinator

Unlocking Literacy: Foundational Reading Skills for Adolescent Success

March 25th, 11:40am - 12:30am, Burke Room

Summary: Discover evidence-based strategies to support upper elementary and secondary students in mastering the foundational reading skills essential for comprehension and academic success. This session explores practical, classroom-ready techniques for building automatic word recognition, decoding, morphological awareness, vocabulary, and sentence analysis. Participants will leave equipped with tools to address diverse learning needs through targeted, research-driven instruction.

Speakers

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist
Cloquet Secondary Schools' Literacy Journey using ReadBasix

March 5, 2026

Learn how Cloquet Middle and High School revolutionized their literacy practices to align with the Minnesota READ Act. Discover how they utilized Capti ReadBasix to identify and address foundational reading gaps, leading to improved student outcomes. Presenters will share data, personal experiences, and practical tips for implementing effective interventions in secondary settings despite common constraints and challenges that secondary schedules and staffing patterns present.

Visit website

Speakers

Nicole Vegar

MTSS Coordinator

Steve Battaglia

Cloquet High School Principal

Tom Brenner

Cloquet Middle School Principal
Everyone Reading 2026 Annual Conference on Dyslexia and Related Learning Disabilities

March 2-3, 2026

New York

Visit website

Unlocking Literacy: Foundational Reading Skills for Adolescent Success (Room 8400)

March 2, 3:30 - 4:40 PM

Presentation Focus: Leadership in Literacy; New Technologies/Innovation; Tier 1 Literacy Strategies; Intervention Strategies. This session equips educators and instructional leaders with strategies to advance students beyond foundational reading skills, preparing participants for the complex literacy demands of college and career readiness. Participants explore how to foster advanced reading competencies, such as critical thinking, synthesizing information, and applying knowledge across contexts.

Speakers

Amy Truex

M.D.E., Literacy Specialist
Literacy Research Association (LRA)

December 3-6, 2025

Las Vegas, NV

Visit website

What is the Decoding Threshold and How to Cross It: Implications from ReadBasix Data Exploring a Morphologically-Based Word Reading Intervention to Support Multilingual Middle School Readers

December 5, 12pm-1pm

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Director of Literacy and Research

Dr. Tenaha O'Reilly

Managing Principal Research Scientist at ETS

Dr. Zuowei Wang

Senior Research Scientist at ETS
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention

November 20-23, 2025

Denver, CO

Visit website

Driven by Dreams: Bold Strategies for Teaching Young Adult Literature

November 20, 2025, 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM MST

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Director of Literacy and Research

Dreaming Boldly: The Transformative Power of the ILA Children's and Young Adult Book Awards

November 21, 2025, 3:30 PM - 4:45 PM MST

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Director of Literacy and Research

Preparing Preservice Teachers to Advocate Boldly for the Right to Read

November 22, 2025, 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM MST

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Director of Literacy and Research
Annual New York State Reading Association (NYSRA)

11 November 2025

New York State

Visit website

Collaborate to Accelerate: Diagnostic Tools and Leadership for Literacy Success

November 11, 11:50am-12:50pm EST

Speakers

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Amy Truex

Literacy Specialist
Ohio Middle Level Association (OMLA) Annual Conference

6-7 November 2025

Sandusky, Ohio

The Ohio Middle Level Association is proud to host the 2025 annual state conference at the Kalahari Resort and Conference Center in Sandusky, Ohio.

Visit website

Unlocking Literacy: Foundational Reading Skills for Adolescent Success

November 6, 2:00-2:50pm EST

Speakers

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Collaborate to Accelerate: Diagnostic Tools and Leadership for Literacy Success

November 7, 9:00-9:50am EST

Speakers

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist
Empowering Writers in a Digital Age

Part III: Foundation of Effective Writing Instruction: Using the Writing Workshop Framework to Inspire and Elevate Student Writing

21 May 2024

Conclude the series with a focus on assessing writing proficiency and using data to drive improvement. Discover methods for evaluating student writing, providing constructive feedback, and using assessment results to inform instructional practices. Learn how to set writing goals, track progress, and implement strategies for continuous improvement in writing skills.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Dr. Liz Nelson

Assistant Professor
Empowering Writers in a Digital Age

Part II: Foundation of Effective Writing Instruction: Using Strategy Instruction and the Process Approach to Inspire and Elevate Student Writing

30 April 2024

Learning to write is learning to think, so explicitly teaching the writing process empowers both teachers and students in an era increasingly influenced by AI. While technology offers valuable resources for writing instruction, it is essential to approach these tools through a technoskeptical stance for engaging in critical thinking and making informed choices about technology (Pleasants, Krutka, & Nichols, 2023). Educators can help students build strong critical thinking skills, enabling them to organize and communicate their ideas effectively and clearly, which is crucial in distinguishing their unique voices amidst the noise of AI-generated content. This approach not only fosters confidence but also encourages students to engage as active members of a writing community, preparing them to navigate the complexities of an AI-driven landscape.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Dr. Liz Nelson

Assistant Professor
Empowering Writers in a Digital Age

Foundations, Technology, and Assessment Part I: Foundations of Effective Writing Instruction

09 April 2024

Effective writing instruction is pivotal for developing students' writing skills and fostering their overall literacy. This webinar will explore foundational writing principles, including the writing process, effective feedback techniques, and strategies for creating a supportive community of writers. Additionally, discover how to address sentence processing and its significant impact on both writing ability and reading comprehension. Participants will understand the importance of teaching writing as a critical thinking act that empowers students to organize and communicate their ideas clearly, ultimately enhancing their engagement and confidence as writers.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Dr. Liz Nelson

Assistant Professor
Implementing Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Reading in Secondary Schools

Part III: Preparing Students for College-Level Reading

19 March 2024

Once secondary students have mastered foundational reading skills, it is important to focus on supporting students in developing advanced literacy skills related to both content and disciplinary literacy that are critical for high school and college success. This webinar is designed to help educators prepare students for college readiness and academic success by equipping them with the advanced skills needed to excel in higher education. Leave the session with effective strategies for fostering these crucial skills and ensuring students are well-prepared for academic success.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Dr. Amy Charlton

Assistant Professor
Implementing Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Reading in Secondary Schools

Part II: Enhancing Adolescent Literacy through Interventions and Progress Monitoring

26 Feb 2024

Adolescent readers face significant challenges in becoming proficient in the literacy skills necessary for success in content-area classes. With 71% of eighth graders reading below proficiency according to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; U.S. Department of Education, 2022), targeted interventions are essential. Many students struggle with foundational skills such as phonics, morphology, and reading fluency, which can affect their overall comprehension (Leach, Scarborough, & Rescorla, 2003). Addressing these issues effectively requires a focus on word-level reading to improve reading proficiency. To ensure that these interventions are effective, progress monitoring plays a crucial role. Progress monitoring is a key component of any Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) strategy, providing tools to measure students' reading performance, track improvement rates toward goals, and assess responses to instruction.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Nicole Vegar

MTSS Coordinator
Implementing Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Reading in Secondary Schools

Part I: Implementing Literacy-Based MTSS in Secondary (6-12) Schools

29 Jan 2024

Existing literature on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) predominantly addresses its implementation in elementary schools, leaving a noticeable gap in resources that discuss the unique challenges of applying MTSS in secondary schools. This webinar will provide practical strategies for integrating evidence-based reading practices into secondary schools, setting up robust screening systems, using assessment data to inform reading instruction, and monitoring progress to ensure student success.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Yvette Herrera

District TOSA
Foundational Reading Skills in Middle School

1 Nov 2023

The Science of Reading continues to permeate the education world. Most of the conversations relate to foundational reading skills in the primary grades; however, the Science of Reading is not only for primary grades. In fact, the research-base provides evidence-based practices that support readers well beyond primary grades into middle school where readers confront increasingly complex disciplinary texts. It is in these upper grades where teachers can rely on the research base to better inform high-quality reading instruction.

In this webinar, we will present ways middle school teachers can build on the foundational reading skills that are developed in the primary grades. A reading researcher who is a former middle school reading interventionist will share the research and provide tangible methods that support middle school readers' achievement in reading complex texts.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Tracy Handy

Literacy Specialist
Expanding the View of the Science of Reading beyond Phonics

11 Oct 2023

The Science of Reading framework has recently gained popularity as a result of state reforms of reading instruction. In the process, the framework has been unfortunately mis-characterized as phonics-based reading instruction in K-3. In reality, however, the Science of Reading framework involves a lot more than simply knowing the letter-to-sound correspondence, and is relevant to reading in K-12 and beyond.

The Science of Reading framework is a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing that has been developed over the past five decades by scholars from cognitive psychology, education, special education, linguistics, and neuroscience, among others.

The Science of Reading research informs how proficient reading and writing develop, why some individuals have difficulty, and how to effectively assess and teach reading and writing. Importantly, the Science of Reading has helped educators understand the cognitive processes that lead to reading proficiency while debunking various methods, such as the three cueing system, that are not scientifically grounded.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Tracy Handy

Literacy Specialist
What to Look for in a Diagnostic Reading Assessment

13 Sep 2023

It seems like every reading assessment you look at today is deemed to be diagnostic. But, what does diagnostic mean? And, what should we look for when selecting a diagnostic reading assessment. In this webinar, we will discuss the characteristics that a diagnostic reading assessment should have. You will leave the webinar with the knowledge and tools you need to make decisions when selecting a diagnostic reading assessment that best fits your needs.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Tracy Handy

Literacy Specialist
Using the Science of Reading to Develop Word Recognition and Decoding

10 April 2023

As the Science of Reading continues to inform educational practices, it is important to understand what the science says about foundational reading skills. Automatic word recognition and effective decoding skills are critical skills that lead to good comprehension. While phonics is a first step in “breaking the code,” older students require more advanced word analysis skills to be able to break apart multisyllabic words. They also require instruction that fosters automatic word recognition of academic words. Building automatic word recognition leads to comprehension as readers learn to make sense of the text.

In this webinar, hear from a researcher and 5th grade teacher on how to center instruction on word recognition and decoding practices that lead to successful reading comprehension. Transform your instructional approaches to teach word analysis skills that support older readers in being able to decode academic, multisyllabic words. Presenters will share the transformative impact of having a diagnostic assessment that measures older students' word recognition and decoding skills.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Tracy Handy

Literacy Specialist
Using the Science of Reading to Develop Fluency

20 March 2023

As the Science of Reading continues to be the focus of educational reforms, it is important to understand what the science says about foundational reading skills beyond phonics. Fluency is a critical skill that leads to good comprehension. This is because fluent reading assumes that readers are able to read with accuracy and at a rate that supports comprehension. A fluent reader automatically recognizes most words on the page and does not have to devote time to sounding out individual words. This ability leads to comprehension as readers learn to make sense of the text at the phrasal level—where comprehension lives. Providing students with opportunities to build both their oral and silent fluency is critical to long-term reading success.

In this webinar, hear from a reading researcher how to center instruction on fluency practices that lead to comprehension. Transform your instructional approaches to teaching fluency to include engaging and motivating practices that build fluency. Presenters will share the transformative impact of having a diagnostic assessment that measures silent reading fluency

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Tracy Handy

Literacy Specialist
Using the Science of Reading to Develop Sentence Processing Skills

28 Feb 2023

As the Science of Reading continues to inform educational practices, it is important to understand what the science says about foundational reading skills. Sentence level processing skills are critical for skilled comprehension. While comprehension is often focused on at the passage level, comprehension is built at the phrasal and sentence level. Older students require support in making sense of the relationships either explicitly or implicitly marked in sentences.

In this webinar, learn how to center instruction on sentence-level processing skills that lead to successful reading comprehension. Transform your instructional approaches to support older readers in being able to make sense of phrasal and sentence level relationships. You will hear about the transformative impact of having a diagnostic assessment that measures older students' sentence processing skills.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Tracy Handy

Literacy Specialist
Using the Science of Reading to Develop Vocabulary and Morphological Awareness

18 Jan 2023

As the Science of Reading permeates education and politics, it is imperative to expand our understanding of what the science says beyond phonics. One aspect of the research that is clear is the need for word analysis instruction that builds word knowledge. This is especially important given that word knowledge highly impacts reading comprehension. Providing students with robust word analysis instruction that fosters both word and morpheme knowledge leads to success as students strengthen their understanding of language and make connections across words and concepts independently.

In this webinar, hear from a reading researcher how to center instruction on word analysis using practices that foster word consciousness. Transform your instructional approaches to teaching vocabulary and morphology to include general academic words and morphological aspects of words. Presenters will share the transformative impact of having a diagnostic assessment that measures vocabulary and morphology.

Speakers

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Reading Researcher

Ryan Hershey

Literacy Specialist

Tracy Handy

Literacy Specialist

ReadBasix How-To Guides | Step-by-Step Setup & Assessment Help

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 06:21:06 -0700

How-To Guides: ReadBasix

Find quick answers and practical steps for managing assessments, reports, and settings.

Organization Account Setup

Assessment Management

Report Access

Capti Change Log | ReadBasix Updates, Features & Release Notes

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:53:33 -0700

Capti Change Log

2026

Mar 12, 2026

Minor Update

New Features

Filter students by Lexile score
Filter students by assessment creation date and status in activity
Filter students by assessment launch date and status in activity
Export from ReadBasix assessment: student names, status, grade, time accommodations, overall progress (% complete)
Unarchive individual assessments

Improvements

Removed "Login with Apple" button from login screen
Added “No Decoding Information” option to “Inefficient decoding” and “Decoding threshold” filters
Improved “?” help menu
Improved wording in Assessment Status filter
Removed "Reading Comprehension subtest should not be administered" note from “Latest Report” in Student Summative Report

Fixes

Fixed empty student list in Group Report when using "Race" rule with "Not Specified"
Fixed truncated "Reading Range" text in Home/Student PDF report for high Lexile scores
Fixed missing Legend in Home Report PDF when Metametrics product disabled
Fixed missing default gender option in Enroll Single Member dialog

Feb 19, 2026

Minor Update

New Features

Seat Audit report: your tool for monitoring ReadBasix seat usage across the district.

Improvements

Reduced test-out threshold to 270

Fixes

Fix issue with MTSS Guide not including students with test date on the last date of the benchmark period.

Feb 24, 2026

Minor Update

Improvements

Improved MTSS grouping algorithm

Fixes

Fix: Filtering Rules > “MTSS” filter: Problem Detected is displaying after choosing “MTSS” group and specific benchmark
Fix: In Seat Audit report - Seats Final column shows wrong value when request is rejected

Jan 14, 2026

Minor Update

New Features

District-Level Student List: Administrators and district staff can now view and manage the full student list at the district level.
New Progress Tracking Tables (with export to CSV):
- Started – Students who began the assessment and can still complete it.
- Not Started – Students who have access but haven’t begun.
- Scheduled – Students whose assessment has not yet launched.
Improved Filtering: The Students screen now includes the same robust filters available in the Group Report.

2025

Dec 14, 2025

Major Update

New Features

We've added a powerful filtering system that makes it easy to segment students.

You can easily create, save, rename, delete, or modify filters. Each filter is made up of rules, and each rule can be configured to:

Include or exclude students who meet its criteria
Apply criteria based on ReadBasix outcomes, MTSS groups, demographics, accessibility settings, and more
Specify a time frame over which the rule's criteria are applied (e.g., latest results, benchmark period, or a custom date range)

Within a filter, rules can be reordered via drag-and-drop, which affects how the filter is applied.

Improvements

Improve performance of Group Report → Students screen
Better handle case when specific demographic data points are not available
Don't show student-specific columns in user import template file when importing non students
Improve MTSS grouping algorithm

November 12, 2025

Minor Update

Improvements

Added a new MTSS group recommending testing for Sentence Processing and Reading Comprehension.
District Admins can now unsync other users directly from the system.

Fixes

Fixed an issue where admins were unable to change the password for unsynced users.

October 31, 2025

Minor Update

New Features

Export district name in excel file
Import SSID from ClassLink and SFTP (users.csv)
Import School Number from ClassLink and SFTP (orgs.csv)

Improvements

When importing from file, always update user metadata
Don't show duplicate values in "Student State" export column
Make it possible to import at least 5K users in a single transaction from file
When migrating organization to SFTP / ClassLink / Clever, set sync schedule to "Daily"
Set SSID to 13 digits by adding leading zeros if SSID is 10-12 digits (MN only)

Fixes

Fix: when importing users from a file, change column name from “unique_id” to “Unique ID”
Remove "Time Limit" column from excel export file (deprecated), see “Time Accommodation” column instead.

October 17, 2025

Minor Update

New Features

ReadBasix benchmark periods: Added an optional fourth benchmark to the school year. It appears after the end-of-year benchmark as "SUM" for summer.
Hide percentile and grade equivalence reports:District admins can now hide percentile and grade equivalence score reports. Access this in Manage → Organization → Settings.
"Subtest Not Assigned" icon: Assignment reports now show an icon for subtests that are not assigned. This helps tell them apart from assigned but incomplete subtests.

Improvements

Status updates in assignments: In the assignment screen and list, replaced the green checkmark with an "Updating..." badge. It shows only during active updates.
Edit protection during updates: Disabled major assignment edits while updates run to avoid conflicts. Other actions like navigation still work.
Background updates: Moved time-heavy assignment updates to the background. This removes screen-blocking overlays.
ReadBasix Results tab: Removed charts from the Results tab (within a specific ReadBasix assessment) to simplify the interface.

October 3, 2025

Minor Update

Improvements

The MTSS Guide report now displays all grade levels side by side, eliminating the need to select a grade level from a dropdown.
Removed the "No Recommendation" MTSS group, which previously organized students without data. Students without data now remain ungrouped
The MTSS PDF report now excludes students without data.

Fixes

Fixed various issues related to setting up Readbasix assessment.
Fixed various issues related to rostering.

September 23, 2025

Minor Update

Improvements

Set "Personalized" as the default difficulty level when setting up a new ReadBasix assessment.
Exempted the Reading Efficiency subtest from time accommodation settings to ensure accurate assessment of reading speed.
Made improvements to the MTSS grouping algorithm.
Added new MTSS group "Complete Word Recognition and Decoding Subtest".

Fixes

Resolved an issue where audio playback in ReadBasix continued after navigating to the next screen.
Fixed incorrect forecast values displayed in the "Proficiency" report when no projected score is available.
Corrected an issue in Group Report → Students where every subtest score was underlined for students identified as inefficient decoders.
Addressed various issues with Clever rostering.
Fixed rare cases where resetting a student's assessment did not function as expected.

September 10, 2025

Major Update

New Features

Introduced educator-controlled accessibility settings in Students → Accessibility dialog, allowing configuration of student's font, color theme, and shortcuts, with an option to lock these settings to prevent student changes.
Enabled student-accessible accommodation settings (font and color theme) via the upper-top "Settings" button, controlled by educator permissions.
Added a "Listen" button on ReadBasix directions screens, allowing students to access human-narrated audio directions.

Improvements

Significantly improved the accuracy of the MTSS grouping algorithm.
Removed outdated MTSS groups "Complete Reading Comprehension Subtest" and "Measure Decoding Skills" to streamline grouping logic.
Added new MTSS group "Morphological Awareness" to better identify students needing targeted support in word structure and meaning.
Enhanced screen-reader accessibility across main student-facing screens.
Renamed log events for clarity: "Assignment Reset" to "Full Reset" and "Assignment Creation Failed" to "Initiation Failed."

August 5, 2025

Minor Update

New Features

Added an "Export" button to Reports → ReadBasix, allowing data export to Excel with three tabs: "Percentages" (cell percentages), "Values" (absolute values), and "Totals" (total student counts per cell).
Introduced a simplified "Extended Time" dialog in the "Students" screen, replacing the "Edit Accommodations" menu, to set default time accommodations for students.
Enabled manual specification and export of "District Type" and "District ID" in Manage → Organization → Settings, and export from Group Report.
Added "School number" field in Manage → Locations → Location Properties, supporting imports from Clever and manual entry.

Improvements

Optimized UI responsiveness and export generation speed for faster interactions.
Added a toggle button to show/hide passwords on login screens for improved usability.
Reduced the likelihood of repeating questions in ReadBasix assessments for a more varied experience.
Updated the "Group Report" dialog: removed the "Profiles" chart from the "Overview" report, moved "Assessment Status" to the bottom.
Reordered bars in the "Growth" report (year report: old to new; year-over-year: new to old).
Refreshed the icon for students timing out on subtests without completing enough questions.
Renamed difficulty levels to Level A, Level B, and Level C for clarity.
Improved time accommodation management by setting student accommodations to the default value selected in the "Extended Time" dialog.
Updated scale score band thresholds for more accurate student profiling.
Added students to launched assessments in a "Posted" state, allowing immediate access to start work.
Revamped the style of login/password screens, removed personal account sign-up option.
Refreshed button styles in the left sidebar and "Reports" screen.
Removed the "Quick Start" button from the "Home" screen sidebar, defaulting to the "Students" screen.
Fixed an issue with updating existing unique IDs during user imports from files.
Reduced default Excel export columns to 12 for cleaner data presentation.

July 17, 2025

Major Update

New Features

Demographic Data Import: Import fields like birth date, gender, race, Latino/Hispanic ethnicity, ELL/IEP status, and lunch status from Clever, ClassLink, or manually.
Demographic Reports: Compare groups in Reports → ReadBasix; click individual demographics category for full Group Report. View student details in Student Summative Report → Student.

Improvements

Bulk Assignment Creation: Enable bulk scheduling, due/archive dates, and launch/draft options to speed up workflows.
Show count of launched assignments at location, including others'.

July 1, 2025

Major Update

New Features

Introduced the individual student's “Proficiency” report. This report enables:

Viewing a forecast of meeting or failing to meet testing requirements.
Setting a custom proficiency goal.
Viewing a chart of Lexile scores, indicating which scores are benchmarks and which are rushed.
Selecting a school year to display.
Viewing a pathway to proficiency visual aid.
Viewing the student's progress forecast.

June 20, 2025

Major Update

New Features

Teachers can now manually configure ReadBasix subtests and time accommodations for individual students.
ReadBasix subtests can now be automatically assigned or excluded based on student performance, such as rushed or unreliable results, MTSS recommendations, decoding proficiency, or test-out criteria.

Improvements

The system now more accurately identifies when students rush through subtests.
Time estimates dynamically adjust based on personalized settings.

June 2, 2025

Major Update

New Features

Pinpoint students with decoding inefficiencies for targeted support
Generate and export reports in Spanish for parents and students
Enable restarting of ReadBasix assessments for individual students
Track a student's MTSS groups in one report across benchmark periods
Assign a unique, student-friendly name to the ReadBasix assessment

Improvements

Import or set Student State ID and Student SIS ID
Allow school administrators to view all assignments across their school
Include a new exportable data point: rushed assessment indicator
Accelerate report generation for faster insights
Support renaming assessments even after they have begun

April 22, 2025

Minor Update

New Features

Block Chrome translation feature from translating ReadBasix

Fixes

In Group Report → Growth Report show oldest year first in the year-over-year report

February 6, 2025

Minor Update

Fixes

Fix: The ending date of a benchmark period should be included in the benchmark period
Fix: In Reports → ReadBasix: “All Locations” report page list does not show all locations

January 20, 2025

Minor Update

New Features

Added an "Assignments" button to the left sidebar when "All Locations" is selected, displaying assessments from all locations for easier access.
Added an optional setting to automatically delete all classes during the summer.
Added an optional setting to automatically archive all assessments over the summer.
Enabled password reset for students directly from the "Students" screen, streamlining account management.
Added an icon to indicate a "skipped" subtest due to insufficient answers.
Enabled sorting of students in the assessment's "Summary" tab.

Improvements

Displayed the student's grade level within the "Skill Resources" report.
Updated the "Scoring Failure" message to be less alarming when caused by too few questions or an unstarted assessment.

Fixes

Ensured table headers are always visible in Reports → ReadBasix.
Removed references to profiles in the home/student PDF report when no profile exists.

2024

November 29, 2024

Minor Update

Improvements

Updated Locations to display “School Admins” and “Teachers” columns showing the number of users in those roles.
Refined the interface of the Organization → "SIS Integration" tab.
Improved the message displayed when a user attempts to initiate a roster sync while a sync is already in progress.
Removed the “Set Role” option from "Members" screen.
Added filtering options in "Members" screen, to sort by specific non-student roles.
Show date and time a student last paused ReadBasix.

Fixes

Fix: an issue in the manual student upload mechanism that caused duplicate student entries.
Fix: grade levels should be displayed in ascending order.
Removed outdated language from the password recovery email.

November 6, 2024

Major Update

New Features

Defined grade-specific scale score bands for grades 3, 4, 5, and 6+.
Added export functionality for MTSS groups to PDF.
Refined the MTSS grouping algorithm.
Enhanced the Group Report dialog interface.
Improved the Reports → ReadBasix screen with faster search and sorting functionality and removed pagination.

Home/Student PDF reports

Show only the correct profile.
Updated profile language in Home and Student-Friendly reports to be specialized for grades 3–5.
Applied student grade-appropriate score bands to determine the profile displayed for elementary school students.
Show grade-appropriate score bands for the chart background.
Added "Personal number" information at the bottom of each page to support automatic mailing systems.
Reformatted reports to Letter size instead of A4 size.

September 27, 2024

Major Update

Group Report

Enabled filtering by MTSS groups using a custom heuristic, with an option to select a benchmark period.
Added the “MTSS Guide” report, sorting students into MTSS groups by grade for a selected benchmark period, with group descriptions displayed for grades 3–12.
Updated the style of the ReadBasix Profiles filter.
Revised the colors of toolbar buttons.
Renamed the “Statistics” report to “Overview.”

Student Summative Report

Renamed the “Recommendations” report to “Skill Resources.”
Updated the colors of buttons.

Improvements

Removed the ability for students to select text in ReadBasix.
Refined tooltips in the "New Assignment" (ReadBasix) dialog.
Updated the color of scale score table cells to meet accessibility standards.
Hid the "Remove from Location" option for the District Admin role on the "Members" screen.
Hidden the "Enroll" button for SFTP, ClassLink, and Clever accounts, except for Charmtech admin accounts.

Fixes

Fixed an issue where clicking "Close" in the ReadBasix "Properties" dialog during an assignment launch caused the screen to lock temporarily.
Corrected an issue where closing the "Student Assignment Report" dialog or the assignment configuration dialog caused the student list in the assignment to reload to page 1.
Reduced the height of the "Enroll Member" dialog.

ReadBasix Accessibility Conformance | VPAT, WCAG 2.1 & 508 Report

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Capti ReadBasix Accessibility Conformance Report

Based on VPAT® 2.4 WCAG 2.1 and Revised Section 508 Edition

Name of Product/Version

Capti ReadBasix

Report Dates and Version

Report Date: 7/13/2025

Last Modified Date: 11/22/2025

Version: capti readbasix-1

Contact Information

Name

Brian Ash

Email

support@capti.com

Website

www.capti.com

Company

Charmtech Labs LLC (Capti)

Phone

(888) 533-7884

Applicable Standards/Guidelines

This report covers the degree of conformance for the following accessibility standard/guidelines:

Standard/Guideline	Included In Report
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1	Table 1: Success Criteria, Level A Table 2: Success Criteria, Level AA Table 3: Success Criteria, Level AAA
Revised Section 508 standards published January 18, 2017 and corrected January 22, 2018	Chapter 3: Functional Performance Criteria (FPC) Chapter 4: Hardware Chapter 5: Software Chapter 6: Support Documentation and Services

Terms

The terms used in the Conformance Level information are defined as follows:

Supports: The functionality of the product has at least one method that meets the criterion without known defects or meets with equivalent facilitation.

Partially Supports: Some functionality of the product does not meet the criterion.

Does Not Support: The majority of product functionality does not meet the criterion.

Not Applicable: The criterion is not relevant to the product.

Not Evaluated: The product has not been evaluated against the criterion. This can be used only in WCAG 2.x Level AAA.

WCAG 2.1 Report

Table 1: Success Criteria, Level A

Criteria	Conformance Level	Remarks and Explanations
1.1.1 Non-text Content	Supports
1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded)	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not include prerecorded audio-only or video-only content.
1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded)	Not Applicable	The only prerecorded multimedia is audio alternative to text
1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded)	Not Applicable	No video content requiring audio descriptions is included.
1.3.1 Info and Relationships	Supports
1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence	Supports
1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics	Supports	Instructions rely on text, not sensory characteristics like shape or color, and are screen reader compatible.
1.4.1 Use of Color	Supports
1.4.2 Audio Control	Not Applicable	No automatic audio playback is included in ReadBasix.
2.1.1 Keyboard	Supports	Keys 1-4 are mapped to selecting an answer.
2.1.2 No Keyboard Trap	Supports
2.1.4 Character Key Shortcuts	Supports
2.2.1 Timing Adjustable	Supports	Time limit is always on, and can be extended for students with time extension accommodation.
2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide	Not Applicable	No moving, blinking, or auto-updating content is present.
2.3.1 Three Flashes or Below Threshold	Not Applicable	No flashing content is included in ReadBasix.
2.4.1 Bypass Blocks	Supports
2.4.2 Page Titled	Supports
2.4.3 Focus Order	Supports
2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context)	Not Applicable	ReadBasix doesn't use links.
2.5.1 Pointer Gestures	Not Applicable	No multipoint or path-based gestures are required.
2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation	Supports
2.5.3 Label in Name	Supports
2.5.4 Motion Actuation	Not Applicable	No device motion-based controls are used.
3.1.1 Language of Page	Supports
3.2.1 On Focus	Supports
3.2.2 On Input	Supports
3.3.1 Error Identification	Supports
3.3.2 Labels or Instructions	Supports
4.1.1 Parsing	Supports
4.1.2 Name, Role, Value	Supports

Table 2: Success Criteria, Level AA

Criteria	Conformance Level	Remarks and Explanations
1.2.4 Captions (Live)	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not include live audio or video content.
1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded)	Not Applicable	No prerecorded video is present.
1.3.4 Orientation	Supports
1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose	Not Applicable	ReadBasix assessment has no form fields.
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)	Supports
1.4.4 Resize text	Supports
1.4.5 Images of Text	Not Applicable	ReadBasix uses native text rather than images of text for assessment content.
1.4.10 Reflow	Supports
1.4.11 Non-text Contrast	Supports
1.4.12 Text Spacing	Supports
1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus	Not Applicable
2.4.5 Multiple Ways	Not Applicable
2.4.6 Headings and Labels	Supports
2.4.7 Focus Visible	Supports
3.1.2 Language of Parts	Not Applicable	Content is in a single language, so no language changes are needed.
3.2.3 Consistent Navigation	Not Applicable
3.2.4 Consistent Identification	Supports
3.3.3 Error Suggestion	Partially Supports	Error messages may not always provide suggestions for correction.
3.3.4 Error Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data)	Not Applicable
4.1.3 Status Messages	Partially Supports

Table 3: Success Criteria, Level AAA

Revised Section 508 Report

Chapter 3: Functional Performance Criteria (FPC)

Criteria	Conformance Level	Remarks and Explanations
302.1 Without Vision	Supports	ReadBasix is compatible with screen readers (e.g., NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver), allowing users who are blind to access text-based content and interactive elements (e.g., questions, navigation) without requiring vision.
302.2 With Limited Vision	Partially Supports	ReadBasix lacks built-in magnification. Users may rely on browser zoom or external assistive technologies.
302.3 Without Perception of Color	Supports	Color is not used to convey important information.
302.4 Without Hearing	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not include an audible mode of operation (e.g., no audio narration or sound-based feedback), so this criterion is not relevant.
302.5 With Limited Hearing	Not Applicable	No audible mode of operation is present in ReadBasix, making this criterion inapplicable.
302.6 Without Speech	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not require or provide a spoken mode of operation (e.g., no voice input features), so this criterion is not relevant.
302.7 With Limited Manipulation	Supports
302.8 With Limited Reach and Strength	Supports	Keyboard navigation, compatible with screen readers, allows operation without requiring significant reach or strength, meeting this criterion for users with limited physical capabilities.
302.9 With Limited Language, Cognitive, and Learning Abilities	Not Applicable

Chapter 4: Hardware

Chapter 5: Software

Criteria	Conformance Level	Remarks and Explanations
502.2.1 User Control of Accessibility Features	Not Applicable	ReadBasix is a web-based application, not platform software (e.g., operating system or desktop application). No platform-specific accessibility features are implemented or controlled by the software.
502.2.2 No Disruption of Accessibility Features	Supports
502.3.1 Object Information	Supports
502.3.2 Modification of Object Information	Supports
502.3.3 Row, Column, and Headers	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not use data tables in its interface (e.g., for assessment questions or results), so this criterion is not relevant.
502.3.4 Values	Supports
502.3.5 Modification of Values	Supports
502.3.6 Label Relationships	Partially Supports
502.3.7 Hierarchical Relationships	Supports
502.3.8 Text	Supports
502.3.9 Modification of Text	Not Applicable
502.3.10 List of Actions	Supports
502.3.11 Actions on Objects	Supports
502.3.12 Focus Cursor	Supports
502.3.13 Modification of Focus Cursor	Supports
502.3.14 Event Notification	Partially Supports	Most state changes (e.g., form submissions) are announced to screen readers, but some dynamic updates (e.g., assessment progress or error states) may not be programmatically notified.
502.4 Platform Accessibility Features	Not Applicable	ReadBasix is a web-based application, not a platform or platform software (e.g., operating system). ANSI/HFES 200.2 requirements do not apply.
503.2 User Preferences	Not Applicable	Application is a web-based tool isolated from platform software, per the exception in 503.2.
503.3 Alternative User Interfaces	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not provide an alternative user interface functioning as assistive technology (e.g., a built-in screen reader).
503.4.1 Caption Controls	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not include multimedia with audio or captions, so no caption controls are provided.
503.4.2 Audio Description Controls	Not Applicable	ReadBasix does not include multimedia with audio descriptions, so no audio description controls are provided.
504.2 Content Creation or Editing	Not Applicable	ReadBasix is a reading assessment tool, not an authoring tool for creating or editing web content.
504.2.1 Preservation of Information Provided for Accessibility in Format Conversion	Not Applicable	ReadBasix is a reading assessment tool, not an authoring tool for creating or editing web content.
504.2.2 PDF Export	Not Applicable	ReadBasix is a reading assessment tool, not an authoring tool for creating or editing web content.
504.3 Prompts	Not Applicable	ReadBasix is a reading assessment tool, not an authoring tool for creating or editing web content.
504.4 Templates	Not Applicable	ReadBasix is a reading assessment tool, not an authoring tool for creating or editing web content.

Chapter 6: Support Documentation and Services

Criteria	Conformance Level	Remarks and Explanations
602.2 Accessibility and Compatibility Features	Supports
602.3 Electronic Support Documentation	Partially Supports
602.4 Alternate Formats for Non-Electronic Support Documentation	Not Applicable	ReadBasix provides documentation in electronic format.
603.2 Information on Accessibility and Compatibility Features	Supports
603.3 Accommodation of Communication Needs	Partially Supports

The Importance of Decoding and Word Recognition in Long-Term Reading Success

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:14:45 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Word-Level Reading Skills Lay the Foundation for Skilled Reading

In reading development, there are early foundational skills that lay the foundation for later reading success. Developing these skills takes time, intentional practice, and feedback from a skilled teacher. Much like a coach teaches a basketball player how to dribble and shoot a basketball, a reading instructor teaches learners how to decode and build automatic word recognition. The importance of decoding cannot be overemphasized; Share (1997) described decoding as the critical word learning mechanism in alphabetic language. This is important because successful decoding leads to automatic word recognition. Therefore, knowing how to support readers in successful decoding is imperative to reading success.

If you have taught younger grades, such as first or second grade, you are probably familiar with what decoding and word recognition are and how to teach learners to decode and automatically recognize the words written on the page. However, if you are an upper elementary, middle, or high school teacher, you probably received little training in your teacher preparation program on supporting readers who are learning to decode and build automatic word recognition, yet you probably have had students who require support in building these skills.

As a former upper elementary and middle school teacher, I recall very little instruction in early literacy, but in the classroom, I needed the skills to teach middle grade learners how to successfully decode new, often multisyllabic, words while building their word recognition skills to become proficient readers. So, in this article, we cover what decoding and word recognition are and how to assess them. Then, be sure to return for the next article that discusses how to support learners in developing decoding and word recognition skills based on assessment results.

What is Decoding?

Put simply, decoding comprises the ability to “get words off the page.” Although decoding skills can be distilled into a simple explanation, the process of learning to decode is much more complex than the simple explanation conveys.

Decoding is a hallmark of skilled reading (Adams et al., 1997; Fletcher & Lyon, 1998; Rack et al., 1992; Share, 1995; Stanovich & Siegel, 1994; Vellutino et al., 1997) and is considered one of the most critical reading skills (Wang et al., 2019) because of its connection to comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Wang et al., 2019).

So, just what is decoding? According to Gough and Turner (1986), decoding is dependent on knowledge of letter-sound correspondence rules that lead to reading isolated words quickly and accurately. It is the sophisticated ability to translate words from print to speech and the “act of deciphering a new word by sounding it out” (Foorman et al., 2016, p. 38). While this may seem relatively simple to a skilled reader, decoding consists of sophisticated subskills that lead to later reading success (National Reading Panel, 2000).

Decoding Subskills

A precursor to reading the words on a page is the ability to hear individual sounds (i.e., phonemes) in words, to break apart those sounds into individual units, and then blend the sounds together to produce the sounds in a word (National Reading Panel, 2000). These skills are built through phonological awareness instruction that explicitly teaches learners how to segment and blend sounds at the word level, syllable level, onset and rime level, and finally, at the phoneme level (Blachman, 2000; Lane et al., 2001).

Building phonological awareness requires readers to recognize words at the sentence level, for instance, without reading a word on the page, a reader needs to know that the sentence “The doghouse is red.” is composed of four words that each have their own meaning. Then, learners move to the syllable level to recognize that doghouse is made up of two syllables: dog + house. Next, learners move to the onset and rime level where they learn to separate any sound that comes before the vowel (r in red) from the rime, which is the vowel and anything that comes after it (ed in red). Then, at the phoneme level, learners segment and blend the sounds with teacher support. The phoneme level is the final stage of developing phonological awareness where learners are first taught how to blend together individual phonemes, such as /r/ /e/ /d/ to produce /red/ before being asked to segment (break apart) the individual sounds in a word, since that is a more difficult skill. The process of building phonological awareness at each level is imperative to future reading success as measures of children's phonological awareness, such as attending to and manipulating phonemes, is connected to long-term academic success (Adams, 1994).

As learners build their phonological awareness, they build letter-sound correspondence that is necessary for decoding success (National Reading Panel, 2000). Through systematic phonics instruction, learners gain the necessary skills to read and spell words (Harris & Hodges, 1995). Once readers have the ability to sound out words, with repetition, they start building automatic word recognition.

What is Word Recognition?

As readers become increasingly proficient decoders, automatic word recognition develops. Automatic word recognition is defined as the ability for a reader to decode text instantly without conscious effort (Kuhn et al., 2010; La Berge & Samuels, 1974; Logan, 1997). The skill of word recognition develops through repeated practice and exposure to text and words. Automatic word recognition is crucial for long-term reading success as it allows for fluent, accurate, and expressive reading (Wolf, 2018), and, more importantly, attention to be given to word meaning (Moats, 1998).

Considering the importance of successful decoding and automatic word recognition, it is crucial to assess students' abilities to determine the areas that they may struggle with so teachers can provide targeted instruction that improves decoding and word recognition skills.

Assessing Decoding and Word Recognition Skills

The importance of assessing decoding and word recognition skills cannot be understated, especially for adolescent readers who are not proficient and are not likely receiving instruction focused on decoding and word recognition. Underdeveloped decoding and word recognition skills will impede reading comprehension until these early foundational skills are strengthened. In an earlier article, we discussed a Critical Link between Decoding and Reading Comprehension. The article highlights a recently discovered decoding threshold — students below the threshold are unlikely to improve their reading comprehension. Lower than expected decoding and word recognition skills are often an indicator of dyslexia (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2005). Thus, assessing students' abilities to decode and automatically recognize words will help identify students who require additional instruction to build word-level skills, and, possibly, even require individualized education services.

When assessing students' abilities to decode and automatically recognize words, they are often presented with a list of isolated words and asked to say the words aloud (Wren, 2004), without giving the meaning of the words, which occurs during vocabulary assessments. The words selected for the decoding task are expected to be in students' oral vocabulary with a combination of phonetically regular (e.g., dog) and irregular words (e.g., one), along with nonsense words (e.g., gorf). In assessing word recognition, the list of isolated words is based on the expected words that students are supposed to read automatically given their current grade level (Christ & Cramer, 2011).

In primary grades, both decoding and word recognition are usually orally administered using one-on-one assessments, such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) or the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE). However, when learners can independently decode, likely beginning in 3rd grade, decoding and word recognition tests can be administered silently using online assessments, such as ReadBasix, that allow teachers to assess multiple students in parallel. ReadBasix, asks students to recognize sight words and decode nonwords (Sabatini et al., 2019).

Often, assessments separate identifying letters and real words from producing possible pronunciations of nonwords. However, the ReadBasix approach uniquely combines assessing word recognition and decoding to measure multiple aspects of word knowledge: an understanding of letter-to-sound correspondence, knowledge of spelling patterns, and recognition of the visual representation of real words. To do this, ReadBasix asks students to decode three types of words: real words, nonwords, and pseudohomophones, which are nonwords that sound exactly like real English words when pronounced, for instance bloo. Measuring students' knowledge in this manner allows one subtest to efficiently evaluate both word recognition and decoding simultaneously. You can find out more about how ReadBasix assesses word recognition and decoding here.

Implications

To ensure the foundation of reading is laid through strong decoding and word recognition, readers need to be skilled in decoding unfamiliar words with ease and accuracy. Therefore, educators of all grades need to have the tools that help identify gaps so that students' decoding and word recognition abilities can be monitored until they demonstrate proficiency since these skills lead to long-term reading success.

Bibliography

Adams, M. J. (1994). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. MIT press.
Blachman, B. A. (2000). Phonological awareness. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Rosenthal, P. D. Pearson, and R. Barr (eds.), Handbook of reading research, 3, pp. 483-502. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Christ, T., & Cramer, R. (2011). Assessing word recognition and fluency using an informal reading inventory. Michigan Reading Journal, 43(1), 4.
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193258600700104
Kuhn, R. M., Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Meisinger, E. B. (2010). Aligning Theory and Assessment Fluency: Automaticity, Prosody and Definitions of Fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 230-251. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.45.2.4
Harris, T., & Hodges, R. (Eds.). (1995). The literacy dictionary. International Reading Association. Hoover, W. A., & Gough, P. B. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing, 2, 127-160. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00401799
La Berge, D., & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a Theory of Automatic Information Processing in Reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293-323. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(74)90015-2
Logan, G. D. (1997). Automaticity and Reading: Perspectives from the Instance Theory of Automatization. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 13, 123-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057356970130203
Moats, L. C. (1998). Teaching decoding. American Educator, 22(1), 42-49.
National Reading Panel (U.S.) & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Sabatini, J., Weeks, J., O' Reilly, T., Bruce, K., Steinberg, J., & Chao, S.-F. (2019). SARA Reading Components Tests, RISE forms: Technical adequacy and test design, 3rd edition (Research Report No. RR-19-36). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Share, D. L. (1997). Understanding the significance of phonological deficits in dyslexia. English Teacher's Journal, 51, 50–54.
Shaywitz, S. E., & Shaywitz, B. A. (2005). Dyslexia (specific reading disability). Biological Psychiatry, 57(11), 1301-1309.
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.
Wolf, G. (2018). Developing reading automaticity and fluency: Revisiting what reading teachers know, putting confirmed research into current practice. Creative Education, 9, 838-855. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2018.96062
Wren, S. (2002). Methods of Assessing Cognitive Aspects of Early Reading Development.

Improving Word Recognition and Decoding Skills

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:14:06 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Using Assessment Data to Guide Word Recognition and Decoding Instruction

Early on in my teaching career, I completed a course in teaching learners to decode using phonics. This course taught all of the phonemes and graphemes along with their correspondences while providing cute activities with fun pictures for students to color. It was sold as the complete package for reading success. But, it did lack an important component—a meaningful assessment that could guide instruction. I did not realize the lack of assessment until a couple of years later when I was completing a master's program in reading and literacy. During a course in early literacy, I was exposed to valid and reliable one-on-one assessments that provide meaningful data to guide instruction, including phonics screeners (e.g., CORE Phonics Survey, 95 Percent Group's Phonics Continuum) and decoding measures (e.g., Test of Word Reading Efficiency) that can be used with a wide range of learners including those in Grades K-2 who require read aloud measures. I also explored silent reading measures, including computer-based assessments that measure word recognition and decoding skills (e.g., ReadBasix) that can be used in Grades 3 and up.

In my course of study, I learned that after administering a word recognition and decoding assessment, the next step is to analyze the results. In word recognition and decoding, determining which subskills (see our previous article, The Importance of Decoding and Word Recognition in Long-Term Reading Success, that details specific subskills) are strengths and those that require additional support is important. Based on the analysis of assessment results, teachers create instructional plans to help learners become skilled decoders and automatic word readers.

Analyzing the Results

Any sound assessment will provide meaningful actionable results. When analyzing the assessment results, you will want to look at what students were able to do and what they require additional support in according to the assessment. If students score low on the word recognition and decoding assessment, it is critical that they receive explicit instruction in decoding skills since researchers have found a connection between decoding skills and successful comprehension.

In one study, Wang and colleagues (2019) found a decoding threshold that is connected to reading comprehension, which is discussed in a previous article, A Critical Link Found between Decoding and Reading Comprehension. The research with over 40,000 students in grades 5-10 determined that when a reader scores below a certain threshold on the ReadBasix assessment, there was no relation between decoding and reading comprehension, meaning an inability to effectively decode severely impedes comprehension. Conversely, researchers found that when a reader scored above the decoding threshold, there was a positive linear relation between decoding and reading comprehension, i.e. the stronger decoding skills are — the stronger comprehension skills will be. These findings are similar to those of other researchers, such as Perfetti and Hart (2001) and Shankweiler and colleagues (1999).

Thus, no matter what assessment is used for measuring word recognition and decoding, it is important to remember that skilled word recognition and decoding is a precursor to proficient reading comprehension and requires direct instruction to build the necessary reading skills that contribute to comprehension. If students demonstrate a need for decoding instruction by scoring low on the assessment, it is important that teachers create a plan for instruction that will help meet students' needs.

Planning for Instruction

To plan for instruction, I suggest using the backward design process outlined by Wiggins and McTighe (2005) in their book, Understanding by Design. The authors outline a 3-stage process to meet students' instructional needs: 1. Identify desired results; 2. Determine acceptable evidence; and 3. Plan learning experiences and instruction.

1. Identify desired results. In this stage, educators determine which knowledge and skills students should gain. When the goal is to support readers in becoming skilled decoders with automatic word recognition, the required skills include:

Building phonological awareness, including blending and segmenting word parts and phonemes
Establishing the letter-sound correspondence
Analyzing mono- and multi-syllabic words based on syllable types and letter combinations
Developing automatic word recognition of sight words

2. Determine acceptable evidence. The next stage determines how educators will know when students have achieved the desired results. At this point, it is imperative to select the type of assessment that will be used. The assessment needs to be aligned to the desired results. So, in this instance, the assessment needs to measure phonological awareness, phonics skills, word analysis, and sight words.

3. Plan learning experience and instruction. In the final stage, educators create learning experiences that will equip students with the desired knowledge and skills. The amount of instructional intervention required for students varies; however, researchers suggest that elementary-aged students require at least 8-16 weeks with 30-120 minutes per day and that secondary students require more time in intensive intervention to make progress (Vaughn et al., 2012). Therefore, students will receive an intensive intervention that builds the sound-to-letter correspondence and utilizes word analysis to build automatic word recognition.

Since it is rare to have resources available to provide one-on-one instruction for 30 minutes, it is important to note that students can be grouped together based on their specific reading skill needs. For instance, if all students in a class or grade-level completed the same reading assessment that measured word recognition and decoding, you can analyze the results to determine groups of 3-5 students who will benefit from similar instruction. In small groups, increasing the time to 45 minutes may be helpful.

Instructional Planning Example

Let us say you analyze students' data and find that your students require an intervention on foundational decoding skills, namely phonics instruction. It is likely that at least some of them fall below the decoding threshold, suggesting that those students lack the knowledge of sound-letter correspondence and have significant difficulty recognizing words that are relatively common in the English language. Students' inadequate word recognition skills present a substantial barrier and significantly impact their ability to comprehend texts. It is important to note that readers must be able to decode a word and connect its pronunciation to meaning to add it to their sight word vocabulary.

If students lack knowledge of sound-letter correspondence, they need to be taught phonemic awareness, which is the ability to detect, identify, and manipulate phonemes in spoken words, or the understanding that spoken language can be broken into phonemes. Students also need to know that a phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken language that makes a difference in a word's meaning. For example, the phonemes /s/ and /f/ are different and impact the meaning of the word sat compared to fat.

When planning learning experiences, you should begin with easier tasks and move to more difficult tasks to build the student's phonemic awareness. A set of instructional learning experiences is outlined below.

Initial learning experiences begin with rhyming activities that build phonological awareness, such as the activities found at Reading Rockets.
Then, learning experiences move to blending and segmenting word parts and phonemes. For word-part blending and segmenting, compound words will be used, such as doghouse or toothbrush, with picture cards. And, for phoneme blending and segmenting, words that have two phonemes will be used, such as am or no, before moving to longer words. For more blending and segmenting activities, refer to Reading Rockets.
Finally, learning experiences use picture cards to sort by the sound, such as this sort.

The next set of activities focus on building students' phonics understanding. For these, you should use activities focused on phonics instruction to build the grapheme-phoneme correspondence.

The first type of learning experience should follow an explicit and systematic phonics plan.
While creating instructional activities, consider using manipulatives to teach the grapheme-phoneme correspondence (see, Elkonin boxes).

The third stage of activities builds students' automatic word recognition. Activities include opportunities to work with larger units of language and irregular words, often called sight words.

You should plan learning experiences focused on teaching larger units of language including word families and spelling patterns, including phonograms, and onsets and rimes.
Finally, high frequency sight words should be taught to build automatic word recognition from the Fry Sight Word List and the Dolch Sight Word List.

What About Students Who Don't Fall Below the Decoding Threshold?

Although the decoding threshold marks a need for intensive intervention in word recognition and decoding, students who demonstrate some command of decoding skills but are not yet proficient require a different set of learning experiences to increase their decoding skills and build automatic word recognition. This is important because students who have difficulty in accurately decoding words may become frustrated with their speed and start skipping words, which impacts comprehension. When students have to slow down and sound out words, it impedes their ability to comprehend the text due to interrupted attention given to the text (Arrington et al., 2014 [PACT]). Rather than focusing on the early literacy skills as previously mentioned, students who have some command of word recognition and decoding require different learning experiences that focus on word analysis.

Learning experiences should include an effective form of word analysis skill instruction to explicitly learn the six syllable types. Resources include those from the Meadows Center, the University of Utah Reading Clinic, and Rewards.
In building word recognition, students learn advanced word analysis skills, such as letter combinations (e.g., /ee/ as in the words meet, greet, and feet), advanced syllable types, such as vowel consonant e as in make and consonant -le as in stable. Advanced word analysis instructional materials can be found at the Meadows Center.

Final Thoughts

Once readers are able to effectively analyze words to sound out unknown words while building the number of automatic words, readers no longer require explicit instruction in word recognition and decoding. At this point, students will be ready for instruction in other foundational reading skills. Be sure to measure students' skills after providing instructional intervention, or even midway, depending on the intervention length; use the same word recognition and decoding assessment for pre and post testing so that you can monitor students' progress. If you don't have a reliable assessment that measures word recognition and decoding along with other reading skills in Grades 3-12, look to the ReadBasix assessment to provide meaningful data that can guide learning experiences and instruction.

Bibliography

Arrington, C. N., Kulesz, P. A., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., & Barnes, M. A. (2014). The contribution of attentional control and working memory to reading comprehension and decoding. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18, 325–346.
Perfetti, C. A., & Hart, L. (2001). The lexical basis of comprehension skill. In D. S. Gorfien (ed). On the consequences of meaning selection: Perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity, pp. 67-86. American Psychological Association; Washington, DC.
Shankweiler, D., Lundquist, E., Katz, L., Stuebing, K. K., Fletcher, J., Brady, S., et al. (1999). Comprehension and decoding: Patterns of association in children with reading difficulties. Scientific Studies of Reading 31: 69–94.
Vaughn, S., Wanzek, J., Murray, C. S., & Roberts, G. (2012). Intensive interventions for students struggling in reading and mathematics. A practice guide. Center on Instruction.
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.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. ASCD.

What Educators Want from a Reading Assessment

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Dr. Yevgen Borodin

We administered a survey on what educators really thought about and wanted from their reading assessments. What we learned from the 100+ educators who responded to the survey surprised us, but the most interesting findings were in what educators actually wanted from their assessments.

Demographics.The respondents were K-12 administrators representing 36 states; 11% of the respondents were from urban districts, 24% — suburban, 65% — rural. In terms of district size, 43% were under 600 students 25% — 600–2.5k, 9% — 2.5k-5k, 8% — 5k-10k, 11% — 10k-25k, and 3% 25k+.

Survey findings

Use of Technology. Three quarters of the districts (75%) were using Google Classroom, and the remainder was mostly split between Schoology (14%), Canvas (11%), and SeeSaw (7%) — some districts used more than one LMS. But a few districts were also using other LMS such as Microsoft Classroom, Otus, Edgenuity, and Edmentum. Overwhelmingly, educators wanted to be able to administer their assessments through the learning management system they used.

Purchasing Assessments. Districts used a variety of funding sources to purchase their reading assessments, most often Title I funding, local funding, and grants. However, CARES and ESSER funding is now available for purchasing high-quality assessments that will help address learning loss by accurately assessing students' academic progress and assisting educators in meeting students' academic needs, including through differentiating instruction.

Use of Assessments. We learned that 60% of the respondents were using two and 20% three or more assessments, suggesting there is no one-size-fits-all assessment out there. Interestingly, despite school closures, only 5% of respondents did not use any reading assessments in the 2020–21 SY. It was no surprise that the majority of districts were gravitating to F&P, iReady, NWEA, and STAR, with STAR being the clear winner used by 40% of the respondents; however, 5% were planning to drop STAR for iReady, DIBELS, NWEA, F&P, and Capti Assess (similar to STAR, but more thorough). F&P, iReady, and NWEA were used in roughly 25% of districts each. The second tier was represented by DIBELS and Lexia Rapid at under 10% of districts, followed by a long tail of emerging reading assessments, including Capti Assess, DRA, mClass, AimsWeb, etc.

Satisfaction with Assessments. What surprised us was how dissatisfied the respondents were with the popular assessments such as F&P, iReady, NWEA, and especially STAR. Only 10% of the districts were happy with their assessments, but there was no clear winner. More than 50% of the respondents were somewhat satisfied, and a third (33%) were not happy with their assessments. What is more, many respondents expressed concerns that their reading assessments (across the board) were taking too much time to administer, and yet were not thorough enough. In fact, a number of administrators complained about inconsistent results, which made educators question assessment accuracy and validity. That is why many administrators were on the lookout for any new research-based assessment that would address their concerns.

The Need for Speed vs. Thoroughness. When asked for the one thing that they would change about their assessment, 16% of respondents wanted to make their assessments shorter because they either wanted to reclaim some of the instructional time or wanted to assess students more frequently. Interestingly, 9% of the respondents wanted to be able to assess more reading skills, which is in conflict with the desire for shorter assessments. Assessment designers know that the more questions they use to assess a specific skill, the more accurate and consistent the results will be. What we found particularly interesting is what seems like a contradiction between the need for a faster assessment vs. an assessment that is more thorough (in breadth — the variety of skills assessed, and depth — the number of questions and the amount of time devoted to each skill).

Usability Improvement Requests. Additional requests included easier to understand reports (12%), help with preparing interventions (11%), and improved ease of administration (9%). The report improvements included requests for more details on the performance of at-risk students, opportunities for students to explain their answers, easier to understand for students and parents, and more focus on areas of struggle. Requests for help with intervention were related to the reports, including actionable reports and automatically created interventions.

So, what did educators want from a reading assessment? Opinions differed, but most educators were dissatisfied with the "popular" assessments, and wanted a faster yet more accurate assessment that produced consistent results and that worked with their existing Learning Management Systems.

Assessing the Strands of Skilled Reading | Science of Reading Assessment by Capti

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

Hollis Scarborough's conceptualization of the Reading Rope illustrates the interconnected skills students must master to read proficiently. Being able to measure the various skills is important in identifying reading difficulties. So, how do you assess each strand? Continue reading to learn how Capti Assess measures foundational reading skills that contribute to reading success.

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WR / Phonological and Orthographic Awareness

Phonological and Orthographic Awareness is measured by evaluating students’ accuracy and awareness of the alphabetic principle and print concepts (phonemes, syllables, word stress, and letter-to-sound relationships), and orthographic patterns (letter-to-meaning relationships). Phonological and orthographic awareness assessments are primarily for readers in Kindergarten to Grade 2 and are typically delivered one-on-one. Therefore, these skills are precursors to skilled decoding.

WR / Decoding

Decoding can be measured by assessing a student’s ability to produce the sound-to-letter correspondence using real and nonsense words. ReadBasix™ uses real, nonsense, and pseudohomophones (words that sound like real words when decoded) to measure students in Grades 3+ decoding skills.

WR / Sight Recognition

Sight recognition tests ask students to identify real vs. nonsense words. ReadBasix™ does this by asking students to classify individual words as a real word, not a real word, or sounds like a real word.

LC / Background knowledge

Background Knowledge is difficult to measure because it relies on the text’s context. If students read about volcanoes, background knowledge will be specific to volcanoes. ETS ReadAuthentix™, a scenario-based assessment of higher-level reading skills, measures background knowledge to provide meaningful data on what students know about the topic before taking part in authentic reading tasks.

LC / Word-level skills

Word-Level Skills include vocabulary and morphology. To measure these skills, students rely on their knowledge of words and the morphemes that comprise them. ReadBasix™ measures a student’s vocabulary and morphology knowledge by identifying synonyms and closely related words and word parts or morphemes.

LC / Sentence Processing

Sentence Processing refers to the skill of making meaning across a sentence based on the various discourse markers that signal relationships. ReadBasix™ uniquely measures a student’s understanding of syntax and semantics through sentence processing tasks that identify the relationships inherent in a sentence.

LC / Verbal Reasoning

Verbal Reasoning relies on the ability to make inferences and unlock the meaning of figurative language. ReadBasix™ measures verbal reasoning through text-based reading comprehension questions that ask students to integrate text information in order to make inferences and draw conclusions.

LC / Literacy Knowledge

Literacy Knowledge is a skill that is often measured in younger grades. Reading assessments for older readers assume that the test taker will know how to read using print concepts, such as reading a text from top to bottom and left to right. ReadBasix™ uses nonfiction genres on each subtest.

Assessing the woven strands

Reading Fluency is often measured silently for readers beyond Grade 2. Older readers are expected to process more complex texts in school and on reading assessments. ReadBasix™ measures reading fluency using a timed passage.

Skilled Reading requires readers to execute various skills at different times while monitoring for understanding of the text. This means skilled readers are able to recognize when to rely on various skills, such as decoding unfamiliar words or analyzing the meaning of a morpheme. ReadBasix™ measures skilled reading by asking students to read non-fiction passages and answer questions that require basic reading comprehension.

A Critical Link Found between Decoding and Reading Comprehension

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Dr. Yevgen Borodin

Students below this decoding threshold are unlikely to improve their reading comprehension in subsequent years

It is a well-known fact that the ability to decode printed texts is critical to reading. It is intuitive that the better your students can decode text, the better their reading comprehension will be. However, until now, no one knew what was the critical decoding threshold below which students would not be able to improve their reading comprehension.

In two large studies, ETS® researchers examined the relationship between decoding and reading comprehension. The researchers were not only able to find the exact threshold below which reading comprehension broke down, but also revealed that students below the threshold in grades 5–9 experienced virtually no growth in their reading comprehension over the course of 3 years!

The details of the research can be found in this 50-page peer-reviewed Journal of Educational Psychology publication. Below is the summary of the findings and instructional implications.

The Summary of Findings

A study with 11,000 students in Grades 5–10 found a reliable decoding threshold (235 in ReadBasix) below which there is no relation between decoding and reading comprehension, and above which there is a positive linear relation. This means that the better students were at decoding, the better their reading comprehension was, but only if they were above the threshold.

Another study with 33,000 students in Grades 5–9 found that the students below the threshold had significantly lower initial reading comprehension scores compared to their peers. The students above the threshold exhibited an acceleration in reading comprehension growth as they moved up in grade level. In contrast, the students below the threshold had virtually no annual growth in reading comprehension over the period of 3 years!

Remarkably, the threshold and a lack of growth in reading comprehension among the students below the threshold remained stable across the grade levels. Regardless of grade level, a decoding score below the threshold reliably predicted low reading comprehension. Finally, there was a significant number of students who were below the decoding threshold even in Grades 10.

Instructional Implications

To improve scores across all subjects and grades, focus on the students with a low decoding skill
If your students are struggling with reading comprehension in Grades 5–12 — assess decoding
Students' reading comprehension will not improve until they cross the decoding threshold
Do not count on your students on being able to self-teach vocabulary before they cross the threshold
Decoding interventions are necessary for students below the threshold regardless of their grade
Decoding interventions will not improve reading comprehension until students cross the threshold

Speaking is Natural — Reading is Not

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Brian Ash

Humans, in our current form, have been around for approximately 300,000 years. We have older hominid ancestors such as Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and more. Over four million years ago, our ancestors became bipedal (Wayman, 2012). The advantage of being bipedal allowed our ancestors to develop a large brain capacity (Gruss & Scmitt, 2015) as less energy was spent moving, compared to four-legged animals. Less energy spent moving meant more energy spent thinking. Another key advantage of bipedalism was that it freed up our ancestors' hands to gesture and create tools. Being able to communicate through sounds and gestures was crucial to our ancestors' survival as a species, which was facilitated by our excess brain power. All of the aforementioned hominid species, and likely even earlier hominid species, could speak in some form. Some scientists estimate that we have been speaking for up to two million years (Uomini & Meyer, 2013). Thus, speaking is almost as natural to us as walking. For instance, children in France grow up to speak perfect French with a french accent, while children in China do the same with Mandarin or Cantonese. Speaking is literally hard-wired in our brains and essential for survival (Dessales, 2009).

Example: Spiders and snakes can be dangerous and deadly, despite their minuscule size compared to humans. Many of us are afraid of snakes and spiders, despite our tremendous size and strength differences. You are supposed to be afraid of lions, tigers, and bears. Those creatures are fellow apex predators and are massive. They will easily beat us in a fight. However, snakes and spiders are not massive predators. Therefore, why are we afraid of them? This fear has been passed down to us, culturally through the medium of speech. Humans and other hominid species were able to create sounds and gestures to inform other humans that we should avoid such creatures. The humans who were able to speak, understand, and convey these messages were more likely to survive and pass along their genes–SPEAKING IS NATURAL!

The Formation of Writing and Reading

Writing and reading are relatively new skills for humans. The oldest confirmed piece of writing is the Kish Tablet (see Figure 1), found near the ancient Mesopotamian city-state of Kish in modern day Iraq. It is confirmed to be from around 3500 BC making it approximately 5500 years old (Woods, 2010).

Figure 1. Kish Tablet

The writing on the Kish tablet can be called proto-cuneiform (Woods, 2010); historians can tell by the lack of any structure that the scribes at this time were still creating the system of writing for Mesopotamia (Woods, 2010). Think about how amazing that is–humans, who had been nomadic creatures for millenia, came up with a means of preserving their speech across time and space. This type of writing codified itself into a set structure that all scribes could turn back into speech. The first writing system in the world is called cuneiform (see Figure 2), which is a series of lines and hashes. The different lines represent different syllabic sounds, not individual letters (Olson, 2009). Humans had not yet invented a system of writing that attached symbols to individual phonemes (sounds).

Figure 2. Cuneiform tablet

Humans did not use this writing system to record stories or messages as they did not have free time or writing materials to create writing for enjoyment. Rather, writing was used for record keeping, some of the first writings are royal inventories, such as “The King has 300 sheep, 500 bushels of wheat, and 100 gold ingots” (Simpson, 1971). During this time, reading and writing were limited to the highest level elites: royalty, religious leaders, and the scribes who were record keepers. Egyptian scribes were in school for up to 12 years to learn the complex system of writing called hieroglyphics (Elder, 2017). Therefore, despite the fact that humans invented reading and writing almost 6,000 years ago, an extremely small number of humans were able to decode the secrets of the text. Large numbers of humans did not start to learn to read and write until the classical and Hellenistic periods thousands of years later (Morgan, 1998). Even then, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were restricted to the educated elite.

Figure 3. Egyptian Hieroglyphics

The first humans to create a system of writing that we would recognize today were the Phoenicians, a sea-faring people from modern day Lebanon (Howard, 2012). Phoenicians were known for being expert traders, and their trading journeys brought them into contact with peoples and civilizations that did not have scribes who could read and write in cuneiform, hieroglyphics, or other symbolic alphabets. Sometime around 1050 BCE Phoenician traders invented a way of encoding individual sounds on clay tablets, pottery, papyrus, and anything else they could use (Scott, 2018). By creating a system of writing that used phonetic symbols (graphemes) that represented sounds (phonemes), they could construct their entire language using this new tool– the ALPHABET! The alphabet got its name from the first two Greek letters–Alpha and Beta. The Greeks, who were very close geographically to the Phoenicians and had extensive contact with them, learned to use this alphabet as well. They even added something crucial–vowels (Cross, 2009)! The Phoenician and Greek alphabets are the basis of the alphabet we use today (see Figure 4 for the evolution of the English alphabet).

Figure 4. Evolution of the English alphabet

While the alphabet, in its earliest form, is roughly 3,000 years old, humans and other hominid species have been speaking to each other for up to 2 million years! Therefore, while speaking is a total natural occurrence for human brains, reading is not! In reality, reading is a new phenomenon for our species that requires our brains to create new neural connections in order to process the squiggly little markings, turn those squiggly little lines into sounds, and combine the sounds into something our brains instinctively recognize–spoken words (Dehaene 2010). Since reading is not a natural process, it is not picked up by our brains as easily as speaking, it is simply too new and novel for our brains. This is why some people really struggle to read despite having excellent speaking skills.

Although speaking is as natural to a human as walking, our brains are not designed to read from birth. We need to be taught how to use a certain set of acquired skills to translate the symbols on a page, statue, movie screen, etc. and turn them into the spoken language our brain is naturally programmed to understand (Dehaene, 2010). This is why, when we read aloud or silently, we are still speaking either externally or internally to create the spoken language our brain needs to understand the symbols. Our brains are constantly attaching meaning and context to certain symbols on a page. This is called orthographic mapping.

Reading is a complex skill that is not naturally acquired through life experiences like speech is. Humans and other hominid species have been speaking for thousands of generations. We have been reading in large numbers for only the last several generations. Therefore it is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect children to learn how to read naturally. Learning how to read requires specific, repetitive instruction to create the neural connections in our brains that allow us to read. Understanding the skills required for reading and measuring those skills is of utmost importance to teachers, educators, and administrators.

The Science of Reading

In recent decades, many educational leaders have adopted the scientifically-based Science of Reading model for understanding how students learn to read. The Science of Reading acknowledges the complexity of reading, and presents a pathway for how proficient reading develops. A commonly used metaphor for the complexity of reading, based on the number of skills reading requires, is Scarborough's Reading Rope (see Figure 5). Scarborough (2001) conceptualized lower (word recognition) and upper (language comprehension) strands. All of the skills are intertwined, and as readers become more accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic through repetition and practice, they become skilled readers.

Figure 5. Scarborough's Reading Rope

Given the complexity of learning to read, it is important for educators to draw on the decades of reading research that informs the Science of Reading. Specifically, learners require explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondences to acquire reading skills and comprehension (Dehaene, 2010) through letter-by-letter decoding instruction (i.e., phonics instruction; National Reading Panel, 2000). As students learn to decode and automatically recognize words, Ultimately, successful reading is built on a solid foundation in reading skills, such as word recognition and language comprehension, which promote learners' abilities to accurately read words and comprehend the meaning of the text.

Bibliography

Wayman, Erin (2012) , "Becoming Human: The Evolution of Walking Upright"
Gruss, L.T. & Scmitt, D.(2015), “The evolution of the human pelvis: changing adaptations to bipedalism, obstetrics and thermoregulation”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 370:1-13.
Dessales, J.L. (2009), Why we talk: The evolutionary origins of language. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Woods, Christopher (2010), "The earliest Mesopotamian writing", in Woods, Christopher (ed.), Visible language. Inventions of writing in the ancient Middle East and beyond (PDF), Oriental Institute Museum Publications, vol. 32, Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 33–50, ISBN 978-1-885923-76-9
Olson, David R.; Torrance, Nancy (February 16, 2009). The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86220-2.
Simpson, W. (1971), The Ancient Near East. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. p. 25.
Scott, John C (2018), "The Phoenicians and the Formation of the Western World". Comparative Civilizations Review. 78 (78).
Cross, Andrew (2009), The Development of the Greek Alphabet within the Chronology of the ANE
Uomini, Natalie Thaïs, Georg Friedrich Meyer (2013), “Shared Brain Lateralization Patterns in Language and Acheulean Stone Tool Production: A Functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound Study” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072693
Elder, Gregory (2017), “In ancient Egypt, scribal school was the path to the priesthood and the good life” ‘https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2017/09/13/in-ancient-egypt-scribal-school-was-the-path-to-the-priesthood-and-the-good-life/'
Morgan, TJ (1998), “Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds”
Dehaene, Stanislas, Felipe Pegado, Lucia W Braga, Paulo Ventura, Gilberto Nunes Filho, Antoinette Jobert, Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Régine Kolinsky, José Morais, Laurent Cohen (2010), Nov 11, How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language, 3;330(6009):1359-64. doi: 10.1126/science.1194140. Epub 2010
National Reading Panel (U.S.) & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read : an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early literacy (pp. 97–110). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

How Can We Make Vocabulary Instruction Matter?

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:11:06 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Building Conceptual Knowledge to Improve Vocabulary

The importance of vocabulary knowledge is no more apparent than in its contribution to reading comprehension. In fact, an enduring finding of reading researchers is how much vocabulary knowledge influences reading comprehension (e.g., Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Baumann et al., 2003; Becker, 1977; Davis, 1942; NRP, 2000; Whipple, 1925). Research tells us that real comprehension cannot happen without adequate vocabulary. Readers need to know between 95% and 98% of the words in a text to successfully comprehend it (Hsueh-Chao & Nation, 2000; Laufer, 1989; Schmitt et al., 2011). Further, broad vocabularies have been found to help with word decoding by giving students a way to confirm that what they sound out is actually a word (e.g., McBride-Chang et al., 2005; Mezynski, 1983).

So, while we know vocabulary's importance in reading, what is it? So often in classrooms, vocabulary is simplified to be 8-10 isolated words that students are to learn during the week. Basal reading programs identify the words to focus on, and provide definitions, weekly activities, and an assessment that likely asks students to match the words to their definitions. This type of vocabulary routine was something I experienced as a teacher and continue to see in classrooms today. But is that vocabulary routine enough?

Based on what research tells us, the simple answer is: No! First, it is impossible to learn enough vocabulary to thrive by direct instruction alone. Second, words live in sentences, which live in paragraphs and larger texts. Teaching words in isolation neglects the context within which the word lives. To really build vocabulary knowledge, we need to move past the definitional level and learn to handle the subtleties and complexities of syntax, context, and funds of knowledge.

What is Vocabulary?

A simplified explanation of vocabulary is the body of words known to an individual person. However, vocabulary also refers to all of the words included in a language. According to Payack (2023), English has over 1 million distinct words. The sheer number of words in English highlights the need to acquire more than 8-10 words per week as mentioned above; at that rate, the student will only learn 3,250 words in 13 years of school (10 words x 13 years x 25 instructional weeks). It is easy to see that direct instruction alone will not be sufficient enough to acquire the quantity and quality of word knowledge required to be literate in today's society.

Types of Words

Educational researchers have theorized various constructs to demonstrate the difference between words. For instance, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002, 2008) proposed a 3-tiered system of words. Tier 1 words are those used in everyday conversation. The language used is informal and used when communicating with friends or family, either in writing or in conversation. Tier 2 words are general academic words that are used across content areas (e.g., science, social studies, math). These words help to construct academic texts. For instance, the word analyze can be used in language arts to analyze a novel, in history to analyze a historical account, and in science to analyze the results of an experiment. Understanding the meaning of tier 2 words is critical for comprehending academic texts.

Tier 3 words are found in specific domains and less frequently in non-discipline specific usage (Beck et al., 2002, 2008; Coleman & Pimentel, 2011). Tier 3 words have also been called technical terms (Harmon, Wood, & Medina, 2009) that value precision in meaning (Fang, Schleppegrell, & Cox., 2006; Snow, 2010; Snow & Uccelli, 2009). For instance, scientific words, such as fumarole and lahar are unique to volcanology, have precise meanings, and are not used across disciplines.

How Does Vocabulary Knowledge Develop?

Distinguishing between the different types of words is important for instruction, as is knowing how vocabulary knowledge develops. Vocabulary knowledge development includes more than memorizing a definition (Johnson & Pearson, 1984; Nagy & Scott, 2000), it is multifaceted with word knowledge acquisition occurring incrementally.

Stages of Development

Researchers have conceptualized vocabulary development in multiple ways with the understanding that knowing the meaning of a word is not all or nothing (Beck & McKeown, 1991; Nagy & Scott, 2000). Research commonly recognizes the progressive development of word knowledge that can vary from not knowing a word, to knowing parts of the word, to being able to use it in a sentence, to being able to know how it relates within a complex network of disciplinary knowledge. Dale (1965) proposed dimensions of knowing a word with 4 incremental stages:

Stage 1—Never having seen the term before
Stage 2—Knowing there is such a word, but not knowing what it means
Stage 3—Having context-bound and vague knowledge of the word's meaning
Stage 4—Knowing the word well and remembering it

Between stages 3 and 4, vocabulary knowledge moves from receptive to productive. Receptive vocabulary refers to the capability to comprehend the meaning of a word when a student hears or sees the word as compared to being able to use the word in writing or speech, which is productive vocabulary (Zhou, 2018). Words develop through phases as a student gains more knowledge about the word, then through repeated exposure and learning, they begin to use the word until they reach stage 4. At this stage, a student knows synonyms of the word and the meaning of polysemous words, words with more than one meaning. Knowing the multiple meanings of a word includes knowing the precise and general meanings of a word. For instance, knowing a word well, such as prime, includes knowing the precise meaning, as in math, of a number greater than one that is not the product of two smaller numbers as compared to its general meanings of high quality or of first importance. This example leads to another important point: vocabulary does not develop in isolation.

Assessing Vocabulary Skills

The importance of assessing vocabulary is well-established in schools as evidenced by students often completing weekly assessments to measure their ability to remember the meaning of the words of the week. However, using vocabulary measures to identify students who may be struggling to read proficiently is not as widely employed. Given vocabulary's influence on comprehension, evaluating vocabulary knowledge with a simple and quick yet reliable measure helps to determine which students require additional support.

When selecting a measure, it should include mostly tier 2 words with some tier 3 words and be designed in a way that measures word knowledge in isolation and in context. When students complete a vocabulary assessment that does not present words in context, they have to know the meaning of the word without relying on the context to guess the word. Having students select a synonym (e.g., smart—intelligent) of a given word or match a topical associate (e.g., voice—talking) are two ways to measure word knowledge without providing a context.

Measuring vocabulary knowledge within context is also important as it captures what students can do with the words they know (American Educational Research Association, 2015). Providing context allows students to show whether or not they know the general meaning of a word or the meaning that belongs within the sentence. While many vocabulary assessments exist, ReadBasix quickly measures vocabulary knowledge in both isolation and in context. The vocabulary subtest employs synonyms and meaning associates to measure students' vocabulary knowledge with no context provided, while the reading comprehension subtests measure vocabulary knowledge in context. You can find out more about how ReadBasix assesses vocabulary here.

Implications

Ensuring meaningful vocabulary instruction in the classroom rests on the educator's ability to measure what students know. Educators of all grades need to have the tools that help identify gaps and monitor progress so that students' vocabulary development can be supported to aid in successful reading comprehension.

Bibliography

American Educational Research Association. (2015, January 26). Margaret McKeown Discusses Research on Vocabulary Assessment. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49vxKZcj7dY
Anderson, R. C., & Freebody, P. (1981). Vocabulary knowledge. Comprehension and teaching: Research reviews, 77-117.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E. M., Olejnik, S., & Kame'enui, E. J. (2003). Vocabulary tricks: Effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth-grade students' ability to derive and infer word meanings. American educational research journal, 40(2), 447-494.
Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. The Guilford Press.
Beck, I., & McKeown, M. (1991). Conditions of vocabulary acquisition. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, Vol. 2, (pp. 789–814). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2008). Creating robust vocabulary: Frequently asked questions and extended examples (Vol. 10). Guilford Press.
Becker, W. (1977). Teaching reading and language to the disadvantaged—What we have learned from field research. Harvard Educational Review, 47(4), 518-543.
Bromley, K. (2007). Nine things every teacher should know about words and vocabulary instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50, 528-536. https://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.50.7.2
Coleman, D., & Pimentel, S. (2011). Publishers' criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and literacy, Grades 3–12. Washington, DC: CCSSO & NASBE.
Davis, F. B. (1942). Two new measures of reading ability. Journal of Educational Psychology, 33, 365-372.
Fang, Z., Schleppegrell, M. J., & Cox, B. E. (2006). Understanding the language demands of schooling: Nouns in academic registers. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(3), 247–273. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3803_1
Harmon, J. M., Wood, K. D., & Medina, A. L. (2009). Vocabulary learning in the content areas: Research-based practices for middle and secondary school classrooms. In K. D. Wood & W. E. Blanton (Eds.), Literacy instruction for Adolescents: Research-based practice (pp. 344-367). The Guilford Press.
Hsueh-Chao, M. H., & Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403-30.
Hulstijn, J. (2001). Intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: A reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction. Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, D. D., & Pearson, P. D. (1984). Teaching reading vocabulary. NZCER Press.
Kucan, L. (2012). What is most important to know about vocabulary? The Reading Teacher, 65(6), 360-366.
Laufer, B. (1992). How much lexis is necessary for reading comprehension? Vocabulary and Applied Linguistics, 126-132.
Mezynski, K. (1983). Issues concerning the acquisition of knowledge: Effects of vocabulary training on reading comprehension. Review of Educational Research, 53(2), 253-279.
Nagy, W. E., & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. 3, (pp. 269–284). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Payack, P. J. J. (2023, January 25). No. of words. The Global Language Monitor. https://languagemonitor.com/category/number-ofwords/
Rieder, A. (2003). Implicit and explicit learning in incidental vocabulary acquisition. Paper presented at the EUROSLA Conference, Edinburgh.
Schmitt, N., Jiang, X., & Grabe, W. (2011). The percentage of words known in a text and reading comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 95(1), 26-43.
Snow, C. E. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science, 328(5977), 450-452. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182597
Snow, C. E., & Uccelli, P. (2009). The challenge of academic language. In Olson, D. R., & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy (pp. 112-133). Cambridge University Press.
Whipple, G. (Ed.). (1925). The twenty-fourth yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: Report of the National Committee on Reading. Public School Publishing.
zhong, h. f. (2018). the relationship between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge: a perspective from vocabulary use in sentence writing. the language learning journal, 46(4), 357-370.

Putting Lexile in Its Place: Addressing Teachers’ Misunderstandings of the Lexile Framework

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

While text leveling scales, such as Lexile, have been a cornerstone in education for decades (Smith et al., 1989), the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; Kendall, 2011) increased the emphasis of text complexity in education immensely. Conversations around text complexity became the focus of CCSS reading professional learning opportunities. While it is important to understand what makes a text complex, over the decade since the CCSS adoption, many educators have unfortunately misconstrued what the purpose of Lexile is, believing that a text leveling scale provides absolute measures and that students should always read texts that are within a “just right” range (Schwanenflugel & Knapp, 2015).

Given that Lexile is ubiquitous, we wondered how educators' use and perceive Lexile today. In a national survey, we asked 150+ educators about Lexile's place in education and found that Lexile is used in ways that go beyond the scope of its purpose—often incorrectly. So, we think it is important to put Lexile in its place by addressing its misunderstandings.

The Lexile Framework for Reading

The Lexile Framework for Reading includes over 300,000 books with a Lexile level. Like any text-leveling scale, Lexile focuses on the quantifiable aspects of a text to calculate its difficulty. This means that longer sentences and less frequent words in texts contribute to a higher Lexile score; shorter sentences and more frequent words contribute to a lower Lexile score (Lennon & Burdick, 2004). While Lexile computes a level for a text, it also provides a measure for reader ability.

The strength of Lexile is having a common metric that helps match students to texts (Metametrics, 2017), allowing for better access to materials as texts are matched to students' zone of proximal development (ZPD; Vygotsky, 1978). While matching students to texts is an asset of Lexile, we wondered how educators use Lexile in their practice.

Educators' Uses and Perceptions of Lexile

In a national survey of 150+ educators, we asked educators how they used and perceived Lexile. Some of their responses revealed a misunderstanding, and subsequent misuse of Lexile, which is cause for concern.

Uses. Given that Lexile's strength is its ability to match readers and texts, its uses should reflect this strength. While educators in our survey did mention matching students with texts, they also mentioned using Lexile to:

measure students' reading levels and progress at the class, school, or district level,
level texts within a classroom or school library, and
communicate with students, their families, or administrators about students' progress.

The previously outlined uses are consistent with what Metametrics, the creator of the Lexile Framework for Reading, describes as its strengths.

Misusing Lexile as a diagnostic. Other less common Lexile uses by educators demonstrated a misunderstanding of Lexile's purpose, namely using Lexile as a diagnostic tool. A few educators described Lexile as the “diagnostic tool” that can be used to demonstrate progress and determine learning gaps to better prepare for differentiated instruction. While Lexile can demonstrate progress from one administration to the next, it is not a diagnostic assessment.

When we think about diagnostic assessments in medicine, they are used to confirm or rule out conditions and diseases before the doctor creates a treatment plan. Using Lexile as a diagnostic reading assessment would be like using a thermometer to determine underlying health concerns. A thermometer can tell the medical provider whether or not the patient has a fever, but it cannot tell why. This is exactly what Lexile can do; it provides a number, which can tell us if the reader is within an expected grade-level range or if there is cause for concern and deeper probing through a diagnostic reading assessment is required.

Perceptions. Although a lot changed during the time of the COVID pandemic, teachers' perceptions of the importance of Lexile measures did not change. When we asked educators about the importance of Lexile before and after the pandemic, nearly ¾ of educators said that its importance did not change because of the pandemic. One educator mentioned that Lexile is a “measurement on which a child's reading level is measured,” so she was not sure why it would be different. Other teachers suggested that Lexile is only slightly important since they have other tools that focus on measuring students' reading skills that are standards-based and go beyond providing a singular reading level.

Satisfaction. When asked about their satisfaction with Lexile, over half of respondents said they were at least somewhat satisfied with Lexile. Educators who said they were satisfied mentioned the use of Lexile to match students with texts as a reason for their satisfaction. One teacher mentioned that she was able to find the “right” texts for her students to read. Conversely, some of the educators who said they were dissatisfied with Lexile shared the sentiment that Lexile does not give them enough information to support students. In some ways, it is like taking an individual's temperature, finding out the individual has a fever, and not knowing what to do about the fever.

Confidence. What is interesting is that over 30% of the respondents reported a lack of confidence in how to use Lexile, which suggests that professional development in the use of Lexile is needed. One respondent who said she was completely confident in interpreting results, reported that she cautiously uses interpretations of students' results because of the storied history of readability formulas. She suggested that Lexile provides insight, but not an absolute truth of what a student can do or what they require instructionally. Her suggestion supports the need for additional reading measures that illuminate students' strengths and areas of need.

Misplaced expectations. The most common theme to emerge from respondents' open-ended responses relates to mixed feelings about Lexile. It seems teachers recognize the power of using Lexile to match students to books, but feel like the instructional implications are unclear. However, the sentiment is a result of a misunderstanding of what Lexile is and, consequently, misplaced expectations. By design, Lexile is intended to match students to books, not diagnose reading difficulties. A novice teacher's story about her use of Lexile illuminates the danger of misunderstanding an assessment's purpose.

As a first year teacher, the educator looked for measures that would help her identify what her middle school students needed to become skilled readers. When her school's literacy specialist talked about Lexile, the teacher thought that she had found the “magic ticket.” She administered the assessment and then spent time looking for and buying books for her classroom library that matched students' Lexile levels and interests. She helped students find high interest books at their Lexile level throughout the school year. Then, to her dismay, students did not improve their reading skills, and quantitative measures provided by Lexile remained stagnant from administration to administration.

The teacher believed that much like Goldilocks, the “just right” book, would set students up for success. In hindsight, she realized that what she did not take into consideration was that Lexile is a measure that provides a number representing how well a reader comprehends a text based on text leveling, specifically, word frequency and sentence length. In conversations with more experienced teachers, she recognized the need for explicit instruction in reading skills and processes to better meet students' needs. She also realized that students need to increase the complexity of texts they read throughout the school year as compared to reading within their “comfort” zone.

The Power of Lexile

Lexile can help mitigate learning loss by matching students and instructional materials at appropriate levels. One teacher shared that to overcome post-COVID lockdowns and subsequent learning loss, her school used Lexile measures to plan instruction based on students' reading levels. By taking students' reading levels into consideration, teachers at her school were able to find appropriate texts, in students' ZPD, aligned to curricular goals. Then, over the course of the school year, they included more complex texts that gained in complexity until meeting grade level expectations by the end of the year. Teachers using Lexile measures in this way, allowed students to strengthen their reading skills with easier texts before being placed into more difficult texts. This teacher also used a diagnostic reading assessment in tandem with Lexile to better understand what students were able to do and what skills students required additional support.

The real power of Lexile comes when it is partnered with a diagnostic assessment. By partnering Lexile with a diagnostic reading assessment, educators receive a more holistic picture of what a reader can do and the areas where the reader requires support. Then, the teacher can use the Lexile measure to match the student to appropriately leveled texts during instruction. The combination of Lexile with a diagnostic reading assessment strengthens the data teachers receive to create instructional plans that improve reading outcomes.

Many reading assessments now include Lexile (see the list) to provide a starting point for text complexity to better meet curricular goals; however, most of these are not diagnostics, but benchmarks. Recently, Metametrics and Capti partnered to offer a Lexile measure as part of Capti Assess with ReadBasix. Including Lexile on a diagnostic reading assessment allows teachers to receive necessary data to better meet students' reading needs, thus creating a place for Lexile that supports curricular goals through its intended purpose: matching readers with texts.

Bibliography

Kendall, J. S. (2011). Understanding common core state standards. ASCD.
Lennon, C., & Burdick, H. (2004). The Lexile framework as an approach for reading measurement and success. [White paper]. The Lexile Framework for Reading. https://cdn.lexile.com/m/resources/materials/Lennon__Burdick_2004.pdf
Metametrics (2017). Lexile measures and grade levels. https://lexile.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/T1.4.FAQ_LM-and-Grade-Levels.pdf
Schwanenflugel, P. J., & Knapp, N. F. (2015). The psychology of reading: Theory and applications. Guilford Publications.
Smith, D. R., Stenner, A. J., Horabin, I., Smith, M. (1989). The Lexile scale in theory and practice. Final Report.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Harnessing the Power of Lexile | Step-by-Step Reading Instruction Guide

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Dr. Margaret Opatz

What is the Lexile Framework for Reading?

The Lexile Framework for Reading is an approach to reading that places readers and texts on the same measurement scale (Lexile Educator Guide) with the purpose of putting students on the path to success in school, college and careers (Understanding Lexile Measures).

Content. The Lexile Framework includes quantitative measures of over 300,000 books and 100 million websites and online books and articles (Lexile Educator Guide). Sites such as NewsELA, CommonLit, and ReadWorks use Lexile to report text difficulty.

Uses. Lexile provides a common metric to match readers and texts. Therefore, uses reflect the ability to match readers and texts. Common uses of Lexile include:

measuring students' reading levels and progress at the class, school, or district level,
leveling texts within a classroom or school library, and
communicating with students, their families, or administrators about students' progress.

What to Do with Lexile

Since Lexile provides a common metric for readers and texts, it can help combat learning loss through differentiated reading instruction using a variety of texts that are thematically-linked on various Lexile levels. Lexile provides guidelines for connecting readers to texts. Given the vast number of texts with a Lexile measure, there are endless ways to capitalize on the framework. One method of using Lexile is to sequence texts to make them accessible to learners. The process of sequencing texts with a focus on Lexile, ensures that students work toward accessing more complex texts as they strive for college and career readiness.

Using Text Sets

Educators have long used text sets to achieve curricular goals in content areas such as writing and science (Opatz & Nelson, 2022; Nelson & Opatz, in press). Although scholars have defined text sets differently (Batchelor, 2019; Lupo et al., 2020 ), the underlying concept is that they are a group of related texts (we use related loosely here given that the relatedness could be content) such as volcanoes in science, or the format of infographics used in marketing campaigns. When using Lexile to create text sets, teachers can utilize the quantitative analysis of each text to ensure texts are sequenced in ways that build students’ reading skills while keeping in mind the cognitive demand that goes into reading more challenging texts. To do so, teachers need to find a middle ground that allows students to engage in productive struggle (Hess, 2006). This means that intentionally-designed text sets utilize the quantitative information in order to sequence the texts (Fleming et al., 2015) in a way that builds knowledge from one to the next as the complexity increases. In doing so, students enter into morecomplextexts with enough background knowledge to make sense of the advanced texts. The ultimate goal of text sets designed with Lexile is to slowly build a bridge from students’ current Lexile levels to grade level expectations.

Creating Text Sets with Lexile

Text sets can be created for individual students, a small group of students, or for the entire class. The same concept of matching readers with texts that increase in complexity over time exists no matter the number of students involved, though some modifications are made when providing reading interventions. Specifically, an additional step is included when designing text sets for reading interventions—unpack data—since students complete a diagnostic reading assessment that provides detailed data to guide the intervention.

Steps for Creating a Text Set for the Whole Class

When designing a text set for the whole class using Lexile, follow these five steps:
1) Administer Lexile;
2) Set the end goal;
3) Determine the focus;
4) Find appropriately-leveled texts; and
5) Sequence texts (see Figure 1).
Each step is explained below.

Figure 1: Building a Bridge Steps

Step 1: Administer Lexile

The first step in creating a text set is to establish quantitatively where students are reading by administering an assessment that reports a Lexile scaled score. Having a Lexile measure allows educators to know what level of texts students can comprehend, and how students compare to grade level expectations. Once a teacher has a baseline score for each student, it becomes possible to select texts at appropriate difficulty levels for creating a text set.

Step 3: Determine the focus

Once the end goalis set, determine which discipline (e.g., ELA, science, social studies) and topic (e.g., natural processes that change landscapes or The Great Depression) to focus on. Determining the focus limits the searching of texts and sets educators up for success in the next step.

Step 4: Find appropriately-leveled texts

When the focus is selected, educators can use Lexile’s Find a Book tool to find texts that match the intended grade level, Lexile level, and category. To build knowledge over time and help readers access more complex texts, search for 3-5 books that can be sequenced and help build students' content knowledge and reading skills.

Step 5: Sequence the texts

In the final step, sequence the texts in a way that begins with the lowest Lexile level and ends with the highest Lexile level. Consider the qualitative measures (i.e., text layout, purpose and meaning, text structure, language features, and knowledge demands) in this step to determine how the content in each text connects from one to the next. Doing so will help to facilitate students’ knowledge and build the requisite knowledge necessary for reading more advanced texts throughout the set.

Steps for Creating a Text Set for a Reading Intervention

While the steps previously outlined work well for whole class instruction, when providing a reading intervention, Lexile’s use is enhanced when it includes a diagnostic reading assessment. The same steps apply, but having a thorough assessment that pinpoints students’ areas of need is imperative when planning for reading intervention.

When designing a text set for a reading intervention using Lexile, follow these five steps:
1) Administer Lexile and a diagnostic reading assessment;
2) Unpack the data;
3) Set the end goal;
4) Determine the focus;
5) Find appropriately-leveled texts; and
6) Sequence texts (see Figure 2).
Each step is explained below.

Figure 2: Building a Bridge Steps for Intervention

Step 1: Administer Lexile and a diagnostic reading assessment

When planning a reading intervention, more sound data is needed than a few data points provided by benchmark assessments and the difficulty of the text that a student can comprehend. While many assessments now provide a Lexile measure, most of them are benchmark assessments; consider using a diagnostic reading assessment, which can inform reading interventions by providing detailed information on foundational reading skills (e.g., word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing, reading efficiency) to identify the student’s area(s) of need. It is also important to receive the Lexile measure in conjunction with information on foundational reading skills in order to select appropriately-leveled texts.

Step 2: Unpack the data

After the diagnostic assessment is complete, unpack the data to determine students’ areas of need. Ask:

Which foundational reading skills do students require support?
What are the trends in students’ scores, percentiles, and grade equivalency?
Which reading skills are students’ strengths?
Which foundational reading skills are limiting students’ success in reading?

A base line Lexile score provides knowledge of the appropriate level of text that can be used during a reading intervention.

Step 3: Set the end goal

Next, the teacher sets goals for the student’s intervention based on the diagnostic information. Goals are based on foundational reading skills and range from strengthening the letter-to-sound correspondence through phonics instruction to identifying the relationship in a sentence based on various discourse markers to being able to recognize and explain the meaning of the most common derivational morphemes. With the end in mind, instruction can be planned using the backward design process (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).

Step 4: Determine the focus

In an intervention setting, it is important to select a disciplinary focus that can build necessary background knowledge and contribute to academic success in other content areas. The impact of background knowledge on comprehension is well documented (Fisher, Ross, & Grant, 2010; Marzano, 2004; Neuman, Kaefer, & Pinkham, 2014). Therefore, using reading intervention time to read content-area texts that develop background knowledge, builds a bridge to comprehending grade-level texts while providing critical instruction for readers.

Step 5: Find appropriately-leveled texts (and identify target words for vocabulary learning)

A strength of Lexile’s Find a Book tool is that it allows educators to search for topics across grade levels to match students to ‘just right’ books. To find texts, search relevant keywords or topics within Lexile Tools. Given the importance of vocabulary instruction in reading interventions (e.g., Hiebert & Kamil, 2005; Wright & Cervetti, 2017), use Lexile’s Word Lists (Elmore, 2020) feature that identifies the words that matter and that students will encounter in texts. This is an important feature given that teaching word meanings supports comprehension when readers meet those words in texts (Wright & Cervetti, 2017).

Importantly, this tool can help to counteract the Matthew effect for target word learning (Hiebert & Kamil, 2005). The “Matthew effect” was introduced decades ago by Stanovich (1986) who described the Matthew effect as the

facilitation of further learning by a previously existing knowledge base that is rich and elaborated. A person with more expertise has a larger knowledge base, and the large knowledge base allows that person to acquire even greater expertise at a faster rate. (p. 381)

The Matthew effect stems from the biblical adage from the book of Matthew declaring that while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. To counteract the Matthew effect, students require focused tier-2 interventions that support target word learning (Coyne et al., 2019). Using the Word Lists tool is one way to identify target words that are worthwhile for teaching and for identifying the texts that contain those words.

Step 6: Sequence texts

In the final step, sequence the texts in a way that begins with the lowest Lexile level and ends with the highest Lexile level. Consider the qualitative measures in this step to determine how the content in each text connects from one text to the next. Doing so will help to facilitate students’ knowledge and build the requisite knowledge necessary for reading more advanced texts throughout the set.

Final Thoughts

To harness the power of Lexile, educators can create and sequence text sets for the whole class and reading interventions. Creating a text set builds a bridge between what students can do and grade-level expectations, and ensures students work toward college and career readiness.

References

Batchelor, K.E. (2019). Using linked text sets to promote advocacy and agency through a critical lens. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(4), 379–386. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.906
Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., Ware, S., Austin, C. R., Loftus-Rattan, S. M., & Baker, D. L. (2019). Racing against the vocabulary gap: Matthew effects in early vocabulary instruction and intervention. Exceptional Children, 85(2), 163-179.
Elmore, J. (2020). Lexile® wordbank and academic vocabulary in K-12. Metametrics Research Brief. https://metametricsinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Lexile-WordBank-and-Academic-Vo cabulary-in-K-12-1.pdf
Fisher, D., Ross, D., & Grant, M. (2010). Building background knowledge. The Science Teacher, 77(1), 23.
Fleming, J., Catapano, S., Thompson, C. M., & Ruvalcaba Carrillo, S. (2015). More mirrors in the classroom: Using urban children's literature to increase literacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hess, K. (2006). Cognitive complexity: Applying Webb DOK Level's to Bloom's Taxonomy. National Center for Assessment. NH.
Hiebert, E. H., & Kamil, M. L. (2005). Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Lupo, S.M., Berry, A., Thacker, E., Sawyer, A., & Merritt, J. (2020). Rethinking text sets to support knowledge building and interdisciplinary learning. The Reading Teacher, 73(4), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1869
Marzano, R. J. (2004). Building background knowledge for academic achievement: Research on what works in schools. ASCD.
National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers (2010). Supplemental information for appendix a of the common core state standards for English language arts and literacy: New research on text complexity. Washington, DC: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers.
Nelson, E. T., & Opatz, M. O. (in press). Developing critical mentor text sets to embrace students' writer identities. English Journal.
Neuman,S. B., Kaefer, T., & Pinkham, A. (2014). Building background knowledge. The Reading Teacher, 68(2), 145-148.
Opatz, M. O., & Nelson, E. T. (2022). Building bridges: Curating text sets to connect to learners' lives. The Reading Teacher, 75(4), 521–525. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2058
Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 360–406. https://doi. org/10.1598/rrq.21.4.1
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. ASCD.
Wright, T. S., & Cervetti, G. N. (2017). A systematic review of the research on vocabulary instruction that impacts text comprehension. Reading research quarterly, 52(2), 203-226.

Is the Science of Reading the same as Phonics?

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:08:52 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Expanding the View of the Science of Reading

Lately, in conversations with other educators and even in the news, the Science of Reading often comes up. This is not surprising since multiple states are implementing broad reforms to train K-3 elementary school teachers in how to teach reading using the Science of Reading framework. During these conversations, teachers often tell me about how the Science of Reading is the same as teaching phonics. News headlines also lead with the amount of money that is being invested in states to implement phonics-focused reading instruction.

So, what is the Science of Reading? Is it simply phonics; is that where the science ends? While phonics is a component of the Science of Reading, the framework is much more complex than simply sound-to-letter correspondence.

In our previous article, we looked at the findings from the Reading for Understanding (RfU) Initiative by the U.S. Department of Education that evaluated extensive research to explain how reading has changed over the past few decades. RfU researchers found that 21st century readers need to be proficient in a variety of reading skills and have the ability to critically think about and analyze the ever-expanding world of information.

Literacy researchers have identified skills that lead to proficient reading. The identified skills are the crux of the Science of Reading framework, and extend well beyond phonics. The Science of Reading framework is a constantly-evolving field as new research emerges (e.g., see the work of Stanislas Dehaene). In this article, we will dig into the Science of Reading and the foundational reading skills that, when taught together, lead to proficient reading.

What is the Science of Reading?

When we talk about the Science of Reading, we are referring to a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing. For the past 5 decades, scholars from cognitive psychology, education, special education, linguistics, and neuroscience, among others, have contributed to scientifically-based reading research in multiple languages across the world. This research informs how proficient reading and writing develop, why some individuals have difficulty, and how to effectively assess and teach reading and writing. Importantly, the Science of Reading has helped educators understand the cognitive processes that lead to reading proficiency while debunking various methods, such as the 3 cueing system, that are not scientifically based.

Figure 1. Scarborough's Reading Rope, Scarborough (2001)

Reading Skills

In an attempt to find the best ways of teaching children to read, the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000) reviewed reading research and identified 5 scientifically-based elements that lead to reading success—phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. To show the interconnected nature of reading skills, Scarborough (2001) conceptualized a Reading Rope that visually demonstrates the strands of reading that are woven together to construct skilled reading (Figure 1). The strands in the Reading Rope consist of language comprehension skills, including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge, and word recognition skills, including phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition.

More recently, the RfU Initiative focused on possible explanation for skilled and developing reading “beyond letters and words, including the linguistic, cognitive, and dispositional characteristics, which have been shown to influence comprehension in past research but are not yet entirely understood” (Pearson et al., 2020). The RfU research illuminates the skills and knowledge that are the foundation for reading comprehension — specifically linguistic and cognitive skills.

Scarborough (2001) posited that word recognition skills include phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition. Other researchers (e.g., Pearson et al., 2020) have deemed decoding as a linguistic skill that comprises word and higher level language skills. Decoding is a requisite skill to becoming a proficient reader. Decoding is the ability to apply knowledge of grapheme-phoneme, or letter-sound correspondence (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; NRP, 2000) to translate print to speech (Foorman et al., 2016). Decoding is a crucial 1st step in learning to read, but once word-level skills are well developed, other skills become crucial to reading success, namely, skills related to higher order language skills (Alonzo et al., 2016 [LARRC]).

Language comprehension skills in Scarborough's Reading Rope include background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. Similarly, Pearson and colleagues (2020) suggest that language-related skills, such as knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and disciplinary discourse, be called higher order language skills. Language-related skills combine to construct knowledge of academic language, which influences reading comprehension, especially as readers move through school.

An additional classification of skills identified by Pearson and colleagues (2020) includes cognitive skills. Research points to the importance of cognitive skills in the role of reading comprehension. Specifically, the process of activating “information relevant to the situation described in a text, to suppress irrelevant information (inhibitory control), to monitor comprehension, to engage in successful inference, and to remember and follow sets of directions (self-regulation)” (Pearson et al., 2020, p. 59, emphasis in original).

Similarly, Scarborough (2001) included background knowledge as one of the language comprehension strands. Being able to activate relevant background knowledge is an important skill that can facilitate comprehension; however a lack of background knowledge may inhibit reading comprehension for some readers. For instance, a reader who cannot activate relevant information and maintain sustained attention while reading a text will likely not comprehend and form a coherent model of the text (Arrington et al., 2014 [PACT]). In addition, several research studies (e.g., Barnes et al., 2015 [PACT]) have found that less skilled readers not only have difficulty comprehending the text as a whole, but also struggle to comprehend at the local level–paragraphs and sentences. Readers need to be able to maintain attention and recognize when comprehension is fragmented and breaks down in order to construct meaning from more advanced texts as they move through school. These metacognitive and self-regulatory behaviors are key to reading success.

Expanding the View of the Science of Reading

So, when it comes to the Science of Reading, phonics is a crucial first step to reading success, but remember, phonics is only one part of a wider range of skills included in the Science of Reading. Once a reader has mastered the letter-sound correspondence, it is critical to build higher-level language skills and develop the cognitive skills that lead to successful reading comprehension. Assessing foundational reading skills is important not only to intervention programs, but also to more effective general instruction; we turn to assessment next.

Implications for Assessment

Knowing the Science of Reading framework and the variety of skills it takes to read is important for being able to support learners in becoming skilled readers. Another critical aspect is to know how to assess reading skills to pinpoint what may be causing reading difficulties. Although there are several reading assessments available, the one that focuses on most of the skills mentioned in this article is ReadBasix, a.k.a. RISE. This assessment was created for adolescent learners in grades 3-12 to measure 5 foundational skills that contribute to reading comprehension. The skills and the corresponding assessment include: 1) word recognition and decoding, 2) vocabulary, 3) morphology, and 4) sentence processing, and 5) reading efficiency. In the next series of articles, we will look at each skill in more depth to provide insight into what each skill is and how we can best support readers in becoming proficient readers.

Bibliography

Alonzo, C. A., Yeomans-Maldonado, G., Murphy, K., Bevens, B., & LARRC (Language and Reading Research Consortium). (2016). Predicting second grade listening comprehension using prekindergarten measures. Topics in Child Language Disorders, 36, 312–333.
Arrington, C. N., Kulesz, P. A., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., & Barnes, M. A. (2014). The contribution of attentional control and working memory to reading comprehension and decoding. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18, 325–346.
Barnes, M. A., Ahmed, Y., Barth, A., & Francis, D. J. (2015). The relation of knowledge-text integration processes and reading comprehension in seven to twelfth grade students. Scientific Studies of Reading, 19, 253–272.
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and special education, 7(1), 6-10.
Foorman, B., Espinosa, A., Wood, C., & Wu, Y. (2016). Using computer-adaptive literacy assessments to monitor the progress of English language learner students. (REL 2016-149). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast.
National Reading Panel (US), National Institute of Child Health, Human Development (US), National Reading Excellence Initiative, National Institute for Literacy (US), & United States Department of Health. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.
Pearson, P. D., Palincsar, A. S., Biancarosa, G., & Berman, A. I. (2020). Reaping the Rewards of the Reading for Understanding Initiative. National Academy of Education.
Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early literacy (pp. 97–110). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

What Does it Take to Read in the 21st Century?

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:06:43 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

Redefining literacy in an ever-changing, digital world

Introduction

Our previous article chronicled the evolution of communication by illustrating how oral language developed as a natural form of communication, while writing and reading were developed much later as a means of keeping records, and are therefore not natural skills, but rather learned skills. This understanding makes it clear why learning to read and write can be a challenge—they are learned skills that require the brain to rewire connections in order to recognize the markings, letters, and numbers on a page as meaningful symbols, which is the basis of the science of reading framework.

With the science of reading framework in mind, this article will review the Reading for Understanding (RfU) Initiative by the U.S. Department of Education that explored how reading and literacy have changed over the past few decades. Among other things, this initiative led to the creation of a new reading assessment (ReadBasix) focused on specific foundational reading skills that contribute to reading success. You can read the full 300-page RfU report, or read this summary of RfU findings. Now, let's dive into the RfU Initiative to reveal what researchers found when they looked into what it takes to read in the 21st century.

The Reading for Understanding Initiative (RfU)

In 2009, the Institute of Education Services in the U.S. Department of Education established the RfU Initiative to respond to the stagnant reading comprehension scores observed over the previous three decades. The initiative funded research and development to improve reading comprehension for learners in pre-K through grade 12. Five research teams focused on understanding and improving the development and pedagogy of reading comprehension; and one team, from Educational Testing Service (ETS), focused on assessment.

While evaluating what it takes to read in the 21st century, RfU researchers completed an extensive review of cognitive and science literature and various assessment reforms (e.g., Common Core State Standards, Race to the Top, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, etc.). Researchers found that the meaning of “reading and comprehension” has undergone significant changes over the past few decades; and therefore, how we help children learn across grade levels should also change.

Exponential Growth of Information

A significant change in literacy includes the exponential and continuous growth in the amount of information. Think about this for a minute—according to Internet statistics, in 1994, there were 2,738 websites, and as I write this, there are over 1.9 billion websites. This fact alone illustrates the extreme difference required for skilled reading today as compared to 25-50 years ago. Historically, even during some of our (my) lifetimes, we had limited sources of information—newspapers, encyclopedias, books, radio, and television. With the invention of the Internet, our sources have increased exponentially and continue to increase, which creates various demands on readers.

While students today are digital natives, they require a unique skill set that will enable them to make informed decisions about the credibility of online sources and information. To do this, they must have foundational reading skills that allow them to access the information on the page or screen, AND the ability to think critically to decipher fact from fiction. The need for high-level thinking skills are greater now than perhaps ever before.

Elements of Literacy in the 21st Century

With the understanding of reading demands, RfU researchers identified elements of literacy that inform reading in the 21st century—print, language, text and discourse, conceptual understanding or thinking, and the social nature of reading. Together, these elements make reading look very different from previous decades.

Print.

RfU researchers found that the modern understanding of print differs markedly from previous concepts of print. What was once simply understanding the alphabet has turned into recognizing print in different fonts, shapes, and styles. For instance, a reader needs to recognize print that is bolded, italicized, underlined, bulleted in lists, or in different forms of outlines, to name a few.

Additionally, print requires readers to make sense of connected text that includes letters, words, spaces, spelling, and punctuation marks with various text structure indicators, such as indentations, symbols, effects, and titles. Further, readers need to interpret charts, maps, and tables while connecting them to the meaning of the text. All of the variations of print are even more pronounced on digital technologies, which bring about their own difficulties as readers of the 21st century must be able to navigate digital spaces on all sorts of screens and devices navigating web links, drop-down menus, and other web features—these sorts of demands did not exist just a short time ago.

Language.

RfU researchers established that language has more impact on comprehension than previously thought. They found that the systems of language—phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics—contribute to reading success. While it has been widely accepted that early literacy rests upon an understanding of the letter-sound relationship, researchers found that an understanding of academic and disciplinary language contribute to more advanced levels of reading comprehension in middle and high school. This means that readers need explicit academic vocabulary and language instruction.

Readers need to know the meaning of general academic vocabulary, which includes words such as analyze and evaluate (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002) that can be used across multiple disciplines. For example, analyze can be used in several different disciplines: Literary critics analyze a novel; Historians analyze a historical event; and scientists analyze the results of an experiment.

Readers also need to know discipline-specific vocabulary, which is unique to content areas (e.g., Hiebert & Lubliner, 2008). Discipline-specific vocabulary includes technical terms (Harmon, Wood, & Medina, 2009) and values precision in meaning (Fang et al., 2006; Snow, 2010; Snow & Uccelli, 2009). For example, words such as deciduous and flagella, are unique to science, have precise meanings, and are not used across disciplines (Fang, 2006).

The acknowledgement of the role academic language plays in reading success highlights the implicit language of schooling or content-area reading. To truly make sense of academic language, readers need to construct meaning beyond the word level to the sentence and text level. Readers need to know how authors of academic texts condense information into compact sentences and paragraphs, and the techniques authors use to create a sense of authority in what they convey to readers. By understanding the construction of sentences and texts as a whole, readers are able to make sense of complex, academic texts, which ultimately leads to increased reading proficiency.

Text and Discourse.

In building on language knowledge, RfU researchers also found that it is important for readers to understand the construction of texts for various discourse communities (e.g., scientists, historians). Researchers determined that readers need to form a coherent mental memory model of the text's content that closely aligns with the intended meaning of the text. To do this, readers need to explicitly recognize how various texts are constructed, including text structure and discourse community expectations. For instance, readers need to know how stories differ from informational texts that employ a cause and effect or comparative text structure. Further, they need to know the intricacies of discourse communities, or how specific fields of study construct texts. Understanding discourse communities includes, for example, recognizing how scientists construct texts with a concern for how the world is organized and how it came to be that way (Martin, 1993; Zerbe, 2007), whereas historians present information collected from various sources and try to construct historically accurate texts. It is also important to note that the ever-expanding information available on the Internet requires readers to evaluate the authenticity of the discourse to determine its credibility and relevance to the intended field—which is no easy task.

Conceptual.

RfU researchers framed the conceptual element as the knowledge, skills, and strategies that support more complex reading goals to extend meaning beyond basic comprehension while navigating various texts. This means inferring, elaborating, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, reasoning, and interpreting multiple sources of information. Given the ever-expanding state of information, being able to critically think and evaluate texts is an essential skill for 21st century readers.

Social.

The final element of 21st century reading maintains the idea that reading is a social and cultural construct. Therefore, reading requires understanding the social situation or context surrounding the creation of a text. Readers need to understand the historical and cultural context that informed the writing of a text. For instance, there are significant social implications for a text written during the early months of the global pandemic. Readers who were not alive during this time period or were too young to comprehend what was happening will have to acknowledge the historical time period and the societal events to make sense of the fear espoused by authors.

Further, the cultural context calls for an understanding of the societal implications for the reader after reading the text. The social element suggests that readers recognize multiple perspectives and are able to construct multiple interpretations of a text, which is a sophisticated skill that takes time and a lot of practice to master.

Implications

So, what do these elements of literacy mean for readers of the 21st century? Instructional and assessment implications suggest a drastic change to how readers are taught and assessed.

First, reading instruction requires explicit teaching in all foundational reading skills that lead to basic reading comprehension and in advanced skills that enable readers to perform higher-level thinking, such as analyzing and synthesizing information.

Second, diagnostic assessment is imperative for measuring foundational reading skills that may limit readers' comprehension and readers' abilities to utilize advanced skills, as well as for measuring the said advanced skills.

RfU researchers developed two diagnostic assessments to measure foundational reading skills and advanced reading skills. The first assessment, ReadBasix, measures word recognition and decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing, and reading efficiency. This assessment accurately measures and identifies foundational reading skills impeding a reader's comprehension. The second assessment, ReadAuthentix, measures global reading literacy utilizing a scenario-based approach that requires students to synthesize and evaluate multiple sources of information to solve real life problems or make decisions.

In summary, reading in the 21st century requires a new skill set that supports readers in navigating digital spaces and critically analyzing information. To perform higher level skills, readers first need to master the foundational reading skills that lead to successful reading comprehension. Proficient foundational reading skills and the ability to think critically comprise what it takes to read in the 21st century.

Bibliography

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York, NY: Guilford.
Fang, Z. (2006). The language demands of science reading in middle school. International Journal of Science Education, 28(5), 491-520. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690500339092
Fang, Z., Schleppegrell, M. J., & Cox, B. E. (2006). Understanding the language demands of schooling: Nouns in academic registers. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(3), 247–273. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15548430jlr3803_1
Harmon, J. M., Wood, K. D., & Medina, A. L. (2009). Vocabulary learning in the content areas: Research-based practices for middle and secondary school classrooms. In K. D. Wood & W. E. Blanton (Eds.), Literacy instruction for adolescents: Research-based practice (pp. 344-367). New York, NY: Guilford.
Hiebert, E. H., & Lubliner, S. (2008). The nature, learning, and instruction of general academic vocabulary. In A. E. Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about vocabulary instruction (pp. 106-129). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Martin, J. R. (1993). Technology, bureaucracy and schooling: Discursive resources and control. Cultural Dynamics, 6(1), 84-130.
Snow, C. E. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science, 328(5977), 450-452. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182597
Snow, C. E., & Uccelli, P. (2009). The challenge of academic language. In Olson, D. R., & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 112-133). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Zerbe, M. J. (2007). Composition and the rhetoric of science: Engaging the dominant discourse. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

NAEP Scores Fall; Now What?

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:05:38 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

The Need for High-Quality Diagnostic Data to Inform Instruction and Accelerate Remediation

The education-world and the nation have been ablaze about the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results in reading and math for 4th graders. The results show a decrease in both reading and math. This is the largest decrease in reading scores since 1990 and the first ever decline in math scores since the assessment was first administered in 1969. While the latest NAEP data is only available for 4th graders, it is reasonable to assume that students across all grades have experienced learning loss, at least, to some extent.

So, what can we do about the decline in reading and math scores? How long will it take to remediate them? And what can we do to accelerate remediation? Since an improvement in reading skills has been shown to lead to an improvement in mathematics (Glenberg et al. 2012), let's focus on remediating reading first.

Here's what we know.

Reading scores for 9-year-olds dropped by an average of 5 points; however, lower-performing students experienced even bigger declines. For instance, students at the 10th percentile dropped by 10 points, while students at the 90th percentile dropped by only 2 points. In determining what this means, Mervosh (2022) suggests that 1 point of decline is equivalent to 3 weeks of learning. This means that higher performing students are 6 weeks behind, while lower performing students fell 30 weeks behind! Therefore, according to the NAEP reading results, students require weeks or months of additional instructional time to make up for the decline in scores. Providing 6 to 30 weeks of additional instruction to catch students up is challenging if not unrealistic. You can dig into more of the NAEP results here.

Let's contextualize this.

The now 4th graders were 7 or 8 years old and in the 2nd grade when schools were shut down and instruction was interrupted or, at the very least, hosted online. We are seeing the effects of 2nd graders being taught how to read via Zoom. Teaching reading is hard enough, yet when we add in the distance learning component, it becomes even harder to teach 20-30 students how to read.

Over the past 2 years, 4th graders may have missed instruction in 2nd and 3rd grades. According to the CCSS, 2nd and 3rd graders are expected to build word recognition, decoding, and fluency skills. Specifically, they are expected to:

Know and apply phonics and word analysis skills to decode words;
Distinguish between short and long vowels in regularly spelled, one-syllable words;
Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common vowel teams (e.g., ea, ee);
Decode regularly spelled two-syllable and multisyllabic words with long vowels and with common prefixes and suffixes;
Identify words that are inconsistent but have common spelling-sound correspondences;
Read grade-level irregularly spelled words; and
Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

These skills are critical to building long-term reading success. Without established word recognition and fluency skills, a reader struggles to make sense of the words on the page as all of their brain power is exhausted on sounding out, or decoding, each word (Berninger & Richards, 2002; Cutting et al., 2009).

Being a fluent reader aids in comprehension as the language comes off the page at a rate that is understandable. For instance, think of a YouTube video that keeps buffering compared to one that plays smoothly, it is much easier to comprehend what is happening when the video plays at an appropriate rate, just like fluent reading. While we do not know whether or not students were taught these foundational skills, we can hypothesize that reading struggles are partly attributable to interrupted schooling.

Can we accelerate remediation?

Intervention research tells us that the best thing we can do is determine what is causing reading difficulties and then create supplemental intervention plans that help make up for lost time (e.g., Haager et al., 2007). To speed up remediation, it is critical to create intentional reading lessons that target the specific skills students need to become proficient readers. This should encompass creating instructional groups that include students with similar needs, as well as one-on-one interventions for learners significantly behind grade-level expectations.

One issue is that 4th or 5th graders are no longer supposed to be learning to read, but rather are expected to be reading to learn in content areas (Chall, 1983). In my work with teachers, I often hear upper elementary, middle, and high school teachers say they do not know where to start when a student struggles to read successfully. Now, with the newest NAEP results, it is clear that teachers of all grade levels will have to know where to start and how to provide meaningful interventions that lead to skilled reading.

Where do I start?

Before deciding on an intervention strategy and going shopping for interventions, the best place to start is to diagnose reading problems. You will need a diagnostic reading assessment that can identify the gaps in learners' reading skills well beyond phonics. You will need an assessment that can dig deep into every foundational skill and accurately measure student proficiency. Only when you know exactly which skills your students are struggling with, will you be able to create an effective intervention plan.

Although there are several popular assessments that could support teachers in identifying gaps, most of them were designed for benchmarking to be administered 2-3 times a year; most of these optimize assessment time and are NOT sufficiently deep or reliable to be diagnostic. It is imperative to have a valid and reliable diagnostic assessment with a sufficient breadth and depth of assessment. This is important because you need accurate data to better meet your students' needs by creating and providing targeted reading interventions.

In an earlier article, we reviewed what to look for in a high-quality diagnostic reading assessment. It now seems timely to share that article as our nation works to uncover our students' reading difficulties and get to work supporting them in becoming skilled readers.

Bibliography

Berninger, V. W. & Richards, T. L. (2002). Brain literacy for educators and psychologists. USA: Academic Press.
Chall, J. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: McGraw Hill.
Cutting, L. E., Materek, A., Cole, C. A., Levine, T. M., & Mahone, E. M. (2009). Effects of fluency, oral language, and executive function on reading comprehension performance. Annals of Dyslexia, 59(1): 34–54.
Glenberg, A., Willford, J., Gibson, B., Goldberg, A., & Zhu, X. (2012). Improving reading to improve math. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(4), 316-340.
Haager, D., Dimino, J. A., & Windmueller, M. P. (2007). Interventions for reading success. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Mervosh, S. (2022, September 1). The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/national-test-scores-math-reading-pandemic.html
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common core state standards. Washington, DC: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers.
U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress, (NAEP), NAEP long-term trend assessment results: Reading and mathematics 2022. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2022/

ReadBasix Reference | Norms, Research, Lexile & Educator Toolkit

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 09:32:03 -0800

ReadBasix Reference

Researcher Addendum

The Researcher Addendum answers frequently asked research-related questions and lists references to ReadBasix related research.

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Lexile® Linking Study

A report on linking ReadBasix Sentence Processing, Reading Efficiency, and Reading Comprehension subtests to the Lexile® Framework for Reading.

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MTSS Toolkit

Focused on secondary schools, this toolkit has everything you need to create a multi-tiered system of support for your school or district.

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Norming Tables

The ReadBasix percentile tables facilitate the conversion of ReadBasix scale scores into nationally normed percentiles and vice versa.

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Common Core Alignment

Evaluation of the alignment of the ReadBasix item pool to the Common Core state standards for english language arts (ELA).

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Educator's Manual

Master ReadBasix: your comprehensive guide to swiftly evaluating students and analyzing assessment outcomes.

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Excel Export: Dictionary

Specification for the Excel data columns of all the available ReadBasix data.

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ReadBasix How-To

Check the ReadBasix How-To Guides page. The page provides essential step-by-step instructions on account setup, assessment management, and report access.

Data Review sessions

Data Review sessions provide educators with actionable insights and resources from assessment reports to guide instruction.

ReadBasix Research Database | Evidence & Validation by Capti

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Capti Research Database

ReadBasix Common Core Alignment

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ReadBasix Lexile® Linking Study

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Research papers

ReadBasix

This article presents research suggesting high school students' academic knowledge is highly predictive of traditional comprehension assessments, which require identifying information and drawing inferences from single texts, but less so for scenario-based assessments, which call for integrating, evaluating, and applying information across multiple sources. Within the study, a shortened version of three ReadBasix subtests (vocabulary, morphology and sentence processing) all strongly predicted academic knowledge (r's .43 - .57), and reading comprehension on both a traditional comprehension test (r's .56 - .57) and a scenario-based comprehension test (r's .50 - .54). The strength of relation between ReadBasix to either comprehension test was comparable to the relation between the two comprehension tests (r = .57). Results demonstrated that ReadBasix subtests are valid indicators of students' academic achievement, single text comprehension, and scenario-based multiple-text comprehension.

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ReadBasix

This article presents research from two studies that compared poor and normal decoders' processing times on real words, pseudo-homophones, and nonwords (Study 1), and evaluated how a processing time difference is associated with rates of decoding development (Study 2). The results suggest that poor decoders spend more time recognizing real words and pseudo-homophones, but less time on non-words, whereas normal decoders spend more time decoding non-words. The researchers concluded that poor decoders may be trapped in a vicious cycle where poor decoding skill combined with less time spent attempting to decode novel words interferes with decoding development.

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ReadBasix

This article presents research from two studies that examined the relation between decoding and reading comprehension with middle and high school students. Using prominent reading theories as a basis, the authors propose the Decoding Threshold Hypothesis, which suggests the relation between decoding and reading comprehension can only be reliably observed above a certain decoding threshold. In Study 1, the Decoding Threshold Hypothesis was tested. Researchers found a reliable decoding threshold value below that there was no relation between decoding and reading comprehension, and above which the two measures showed a positive linear relation. Study 2 examined a longitudinal analysis of reading comprehension growth as a function of initial decoding status. Results showed that scoring below the decoding threshold was associated with stagnant growth in reading comprehension, and above demonstrated accelerating reading comprehension growth from grade to grade.

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ReadBasix

This article describes an early conception of ReadBasix designed to measure six component and integrated reading skills and determine the assessment's fit into an RTI framework. Aligning ReadBasix with the research in cognitive science, reading and learning allowed researchers to create an assessment that can help identify weakness in each of the six foundational skills. Additionally, the battery was found to be more predictive for students who were struggling readers. From the information provided by the assessment's results, educators can make more informed decisions about who needs help, what help is needed, and whether the instructional support is effective.

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ReadBasix

This article presents a developmentally sensitive reading comprehension assessment grounded in a scenario-based assessment paradigm, which was designed to meet the evolving construct of reading comprehension. Evidence for the concurrent validity of ReadBasix is included. The authors found the ReadBasix comprehension subtest to be correlated with external measures of reading comprehension, specifically the Gates-MacGinitie reading test and the scenario-based assessment. The correlation between the ReadBasix comprehension subtest and the scenario-based assessment of reading comprehension is important because the scenario-based assessment requires higher level comprehension constructs and shows that higher level constructs are related to foundational comprehension as measured by ReadBasix.

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ReadBasix

This research study examined the effect of reading purpose on participants' reading behaviors using eye-tracking technologies. Proficient undergraduate students read four passages; two required participants to write a summary, and two required answering multiple choice questions. Results indicated that more time was spent constructing a coherent mental model of text content (deep comprehension) when the purpose for reading included a written summary as compared to only answering multiple choice questions. This study provided evidence for content validity of the ReadBasix assessment because reading relevant parts of passages facilitated answering comprehension questions.

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ReadBasix

This research study investigated how individual differences interacted with task requirements utilizing eye tracking technologies to measure undergraduate students' reading efficiency. Researchers found that participants spent more time reading when the task required a written summary as compared to when the task required only answering multiple choice questions. The time spent reading benefitted students who had relatively low reading efficiency as they were able to answer the multiple choice questions more efficiently after writing a summary. The results provide structural validity of ReadBasix by showing convergence in reading comprehension, fluency, and summary writing measures.

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ReadBasix

This study presents data from two measures that were designed to provide a more holistic picture of reading comprehension. The measures include the Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation (RISE), now known as ReadBasix, and Global, Integrated Scenario-Based Assessment (GISA), now known as ReadAuthentix in the Capti suite of assessments. The results show that each subtest on ReadBasix predicted unique variance on ReadAuthentix. Further, this study provides evidence for measuring foundational reading skills, five subtests of ReadBasix, when assessing reading comprehension because lower level foundational skills may impede comprehension.

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Technical reports

ReadBasix

This is the third and most recent edition of the technical report for the ReadBasix (SARA / RISE) assessment battery. This report expands the first and second reports by featuring a national sample of students from grades 3-12 (the first report had grades 6-8; the second one had grades 5-10). This report includes a theoretical overview of the battery of assessments including a subtest for each foundational skill: word recognition and decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing, and reading efficiency, and for basic reading comprehension. The report includes psychometric analyses, item response theory scaling study, evaluation of multidimensionality, validity evidence, evaluation of differential item functioning for gender, and race/ethnicity.

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ReadBasix

The second edition of the technical report on the ReadBasix (SARA / RISE) assessment battery expands the first report by featuring grades 5-10 (the original had grades 6-8). Included in this report are analyses for each subtest (word recognition and decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing, and reading efficiency, and basic reading comprehension), psychometric analysis of parallel forms of each subtest, results of item response theory scaling studies for each subtest across the entire grade span, and evaluation of differential item functioning for gender, and race/ethnicity.

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ReadBasix

This is the first technical report on the ReadBasix assessment (SARA / RISE). ReadBasix was originally designed for struggling readers in middle school because teachers within a large, urban district wanted more information about why their students were struggling to read. The battery of assessments includes a subtest for each foundational skill: word recognition and decoding, vocabulary, morphology, sentence processing, and reading efficiency, as well as for basic reading comprehension. This report details the research base that supports the design and development of the reading skills components battery, and describes a pilot study with students in grades 6-8.

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ReadBasix

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ReadBasix

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ReadBasix

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Reports on administration

ReadBasix

The primary purpose of this study was to link the ReadBasix Sentence Processing, Reading Efficiency, and Reading Comprehension Subtests to the Lexile Framework for Reading. ReadBasix Subtest scale scores can now be used to present a solution for matching students with text and information that can leverage tools such as the Lexile "Find A Book" to answer questions related to standards, test score interpretation, and test validation. A predictive function was constructed to transform ReadBasix Sentence Processing, Reading Efficiency, and Reading Comprehension subtest scale scores to Lexile reading measures. The regression approach allows for a profile of ReadBasix scores to be combined to predict a Lexile reading measure, rather than a multitude of functions for each subtest.

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ReadBasix

This article presents evidence to suggest potential thresholds in foundational reading skills that may limit college students' reading comprehension on both close and applied literacy tasks. This research extends the work of Wang, Sabatini, O'Reilly, and Weeks (2019) that found students' growth in reading comprehension conditional on their decoding scores to explore whether there are thresholds in foundational skills that may limit reading comprehension for college students. The study included students who were determined to be underprepared for college and assigned to developmental literacy programs, and others who were determined to be prepared for college. The findings suggest that there are thresholds for foundational reading skills—decoding/word recognition, morphological knowledge, and sentence processing—that had implications for students' inclination to engage in the reading comprehension strategies of paraphrasing, bridging, and elaborating (all higher level literacy tasks). Students who fell below the thresholds demonstrated a lower level of employing reading strategies when compared to those who above the thresholds. These are important findings as they highlight problems with foundational reading skills that may persist into college.

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ReadBasix

This article shares research on READI, a reading intervention designed to increase students' reading comprehension. The Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation (RISE), also known as ReadBasix, was used as the pretest and the Global, Integrated Scenario-Based (GISA), now known as ReadAuthentix, was used as the posttest. Both ReadBasix and ReadAuthentix are part of the Capti suite of assessments. Ninth-graders' performance on the comprehension measures suggests that the skills measured on ReadBasix are related to the deep comprehension required by ReadAuthentix.

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ReadBasix

This article shares research on the Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI), which was designed as a supplemental reading program based on peer- and discussion-based instruction that supports word-reading skills, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. ReadBasix (formerly known as RISE) was used to measure success of the intervention based on students' scores. The results from 6th to 8th grade students indicate that the skills assessed by ReadBasix can be improved from targeted reading interventions such as STARI.

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ReadBasix

This research article shares supporting evidence for the vast amount of variance in reading comprehension being attributed to oral language, specifically lexical knowledge. The findings differ from the Simple View of Reading proposed by Gough and Tunmer (1986), which suggest it is decoding and language comprehension that contribute to reading comprehension. The study also provides evidence for the concurrent validity of ReadBasix as the component subtests were predictive of reading comprehension. ReadBasix subtests, specifically the vocabulary and morphology, correlated with the Gates-MacGinitie reading test.

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The R&D of ReadBasix was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305F100005 to the Educational Testing Service (ETS) as part of the Reading for Understanding Research (RFU) Initiative, as well as through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program contracts 91990019C0024, 91990021C0029, and 91990022C0042 to Charmtech Labs LLC. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Capti Rostering Guides | Manual & Automated Student Enrollment Help

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Capti ReadBasix deployment and configuration:
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What to Look for in a Diagnostic Reading Assessment

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 05:36:02 -0800

Dr. Margaret Opatz

As a former teacher, I recall striving to figure out what was causing my students to struggle with reading. I’d review their previous year’s state ELA assessment results and get an overall understanding of where my students fell within reading proficiency. I’d see that my students were highly proficient, proficient, approaching proficient, or below proficient. These four levels told me something about my students, but not enough to identify their strengths and areas of need, so I’d administer a diagnostic reading assessment to find out where I should focus my instruction.

Now, after 2 years of potentially interrupted reading instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more important to identify where students are in their reading development and abilities. This is especially true for students who are expected to read to learn (grades 4-12), but may have gaps in their foundational reading skills due to interrupted instruction. This is where you will need a diagnostic assessment, but how do you choose a good one?

Characteristics of a Diagnostic Reading Assessment

When looking for a diagnostic assessment, there are certain characteristics to check. First, look for a diagnostic assessment that matches your purpose (e.g., the reading skills you want to assess). Then, look at the length of the assessment and examine its reliability and validity. To find these, you may have to go beyond marketing materials and look into technical documentation or reports, or just ask the customer representatives to give you the details.

Foundational skills. Depending on your purpose, you should select a test that measures the specific reading skills you want to focus on. It is important to measure more than just reading comprehension because often one or more of its component skills impede a reader’s ability to proficiently comprehend a text. That’s why a solid diagnostic reading assessment should measure foundational reading skills which are the stepping stones to proficient reading comprehension. The foundational reading skills that are critical to reading include decoding, word recognition, vocabulary development, morphological (word parts) awareness, sentence processing, and reading efficiency. Gathering information on the foundational skills will allow you to pinpoint areas of need to support students in becoming skilled readers.

Length. We all wish that assessments were quick and accurate. Unfortunately, the shorter the assessment, the less reliable and valid it will be. A good diagnostic assessment should include 20-30 items for each skill to provide insight into the reader’s abilities (the number of items may vary depending on their type). It is even better if you can assess each skill with a separate test because you do not have to administer them all at once, and a single short test is easier to fit into your class schedule. Often, assessments only claim to be diagnostic, but they do not include enough items to provide instructionally diagnostic information. Some assessments seem to include enough items to measure a single skill, but claim to measure multiple foundational skills. Beware, they may have low reliability or validity!

Reliability. If you assessed a student multiple times over a short period of time, you would expect that the student’s scores would be similar, right? Unfortunately, many assessments will produce wildly different scores. Reliability refers to the precision of the score and the consistency of the results from one test to the next. While the scores in reading comprehension may sometimes fluctuate due to students’ background knowledge, you should expect that a good diagnostic assessment produces a reliable measure, at least, for the foundational skills. A reliable diagnostic assessment should have a Cronbach's alpha score of at least 0.7 for each reading skill it claims to measure.

Validity. Finally, any good assessment should measure what it claims to measure. If an assessment has high reliability, you can feel fairly confident that it is measuring what it is meant to measure, indicating validity. Yet, there are a couple of things to examine when determining an assessment’s validity. And you may need to look into the technical manuals or, better yet, peer-reviewed publications about the assessment to see what the researchers who created the assessment say about its validity. First, look at the theoretical framework of the constructs to determine whether the research behind the assessment supports the intended measures and uses; marketing language can easily go well beyond what is supported by research. Then, examine research or technical reports to determine how the assessment has been correlated with other standardized measures. For instance, if a new reading assessment designed to assess comprehension is highly correlated with a well-known, standardized comprehension measure, such as the Gates–MacGinitie reading test, the new assessment is considered to be trustworthy. Conversely, if an assessment has weak correlation with a well-known test, it lacks validity.

So, what does a good diagnostic reading assessment look like? It really depends on your purpose. However, as a general rule, a good diagnostic reading assessment covers foundational skills, includes 20-30 items per skill, and provides a reliable and valid measure of each skill. You may have to do some research to justify your choice of the assessment, but it will be all worth it when you get results you can trust.

To learn more about the qualities of a good diagnostic assessment, watch the webinar below.

As a teacher, what I am looking for in a diagnostic assessment is… to look at all of those different foundational skills to determine if there are weaknesses...

Sean Morrisey

Teacher, ELA Standards Leader, Frontier Central SD, NY

Data Review Sessions | Collaborative Literacy Insights & Benchmarking by Capti

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 05:32:46 -0800

Data Review Sessions

These 60-minute collaborative sessions empower educators to analyze ReadBasix benchmarking data and leverage insights to enhance literacy instruction at the district, school, and classroom levels. Participants engage in structured, evidence-based discussions to identify trends, assess instructional impact, and refine strategies that promote student growth. The sessions foster a culture of reflective practice, equipping educators with practical tools to build a sustainable, data-informed literacy framework tailored to students' needs.

Fall Data Review

Beginning-of-Year Diagnostic Data Interpretation and Instructional Planning

This session guides educators in interpreting beginning-of-year benchmarking data to establish students' foundational literacy skill levels and instructional needs. Participants explore evidence-based methods to design differentiated instruction, including targeted one-on-one and small-group interventions. The session emphasizes aligning Tier 1 instruction and resource allocation with diagnostic insights to support student success.

district administrators

school leaders

classroom teachers

instructional coaches

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

Analyze diagnostic data to identify students' foundational literacy skills and needs
Design differentiated instructional plans for one-on-one and small-group interventions
Align Tier 1 instructional strategies with benchmarking insights
Allocate resources effectively to support targeted literacy interventions

As they're pulling up their student data and they're looking at what interventions would be appropriate… this helps teachers have something concrete… oh, my student is weak here — this is what I should be doing to intervene.

Winter Data Review

Middle-of-Year Progress Review and Instructional Adjustment

This session focuses on evaluating the impact of fall instructional strategies using mid-year ReadBasix benchmarking data. Educators collaborate to monitor student growth, refine intervention groups, and assess the effectiveness of instructional practices and systemic supports. Through data-driven dialogue, participants adjust strategies and set new instructional goals to optimize literacy outcomes for the second half of the year.

district administrators

school leaders

classroom teachers

instructional coaches

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

Evaluate student progress using mid-year benchmarking data
Refine intervention groups based on growth trends and instructional needs
Assess the effectiveness of instructional practices and systemic supports
Set targeted instructional goals for the remainder of the school year

Ryan met with us regarding our midyear data and suggested some resources many of which were free which was fantastic…

Spring Data Review

End-of-Year Reflection and Program Effectiveness

This session provides a comprehensive review of year-long student progress and the effectiveness of instructional interventions. Educators synthesize data-driven insights to inform end-of-year reporting, celebrate successes, and identify areas for future focus. The session also supports planning for sustained literacy improvement and readiness for the next instructional cycle.

district administrators

school leaders

classroom teachers

instructional coaches

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

Synthesize year-long benchmarking data to evaluate student progress
Prepare end-of-year reports highlighting successes and areas for improvement
Assess the overall effectiveness of instructional interventions
Develop plans for sustained literacy growth in the upcoming instructional cycle

Ryan analyzes it all for me and shows me the growth or lack of growth between tests and all of that has just been really amazing.

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ReadBasix for Families | Understanding Student Assessment & Skills

$utils.escapeXML($entry.creator.screenName) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 05:16:07 -0800

English Español

Capti ReadBasix Tests

ReadBasix assesses 5 foundational reading skills and basic reading comprehension. Each skill can be assessed together or individually; the entire battery of 6 subtests takes students 45-60 minutes on average and up to 84 minutes if timed. The assessment time can be reduced by focusing on specific skills, most of which can be assessed in 5-10 minutes each. Each subtest has 3 levels of difficulty that are automatically personalized to students' levels based on the results of the previous administration of the ReadBasix diagnostic assessment or the ReadRoutix screener.

Word Recognition and Decoding

30 items

5-8 min

Sight word recognition concerns the ability to accurately and efficiently recognize known words in printed text. Phonological decoding is the process of linking letters with their sounds to read new words. Both are needed to support vocabulary acquisition and fluent reading. Low accuracy or low automaticity of decoding is the primary symptom of a reading disability or dyslexia.

The word recognition and decoding subtest uses three item types: real words, nonsense words, and pseudohomophones.

Real word items ask students to identify actual words encountered in school.

Nonsense word items ask students to identify made up words.

Pseudohomophone items ask students to identify special kinds of nonsense words that, when pronounced, sound exactly like real English words.

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Vocabulary

30 items

5-9 min

Vocabulary knowledge helps derive the meaning of words and their associations to related words ("forest" to "trees"). Some estimates indicate that successful reading comprehension requires knowing the meaning of 95-98 percent of the words in text; thus, students with poor knowledge of grade-level vocabulary will struggle to understand disciplinary content.

The vocabulary subtest uses two types of items to measure vocabulary knowledge: synonyms and topical associates.

Synonym items ask students to identify words that mean the same thing.

Topical association items ask students to identify words that are connected to the same topic.

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Morphology

30 items

5-10 min

Morphological awareness is the ability to identify and use various word parts. The subtest measures derivational morphology—those words that have prefixes and suffixes attached to a root to recognize words, comprehend sentences, and learn the meaning of new words. Morphology is important for developing new vocabulary and differentiating nuances in a word's meaning. Below grade-level performance could indicate poor vocabulary knowledge and/or a lack of understanding of how words are constructed.

The morphology subtest uses two types of items to measure morphological knowledge: prefixes and suffixes.

Prefix items ask students to select the prefix that fits the context.

Suffix items ask students to select the suffix that fits the context.

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Sentence Processing

25 items

5-9 min

Skilled Sentence Processing is the ability to comprehend sentences of varying complexity using cues, such as temporal (before, second), referential (him, her, this, that), relational (less than, larger than), and causal (because, therefore) connectors and conjunctions. The ability to understand the nuanced meaning of sentences is important for grasping the overall meaning of text. Lower sentence processing skill can be due to weaknesses in the preceding skills and/or a lack of familiarity with cues.

The sentence processing subtest uses two types of items to measure sentence processing knowledge: discourse markers and internal logic.

Discourse marker items ask students to select the words that manage the flow and structure of the sentence.

Internal logic items ask students to select adjectives, pronouns, or adverbs that complete the sentence and match the context and syntax.

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Reading Efficiency

32-41 items

5-13 min

Reading Efficiency concerns the ability to silently read text accurately and at an appropriate rate for understanding. Below grade performance in fluency indicates weaknesses in one or more of the preceding foundational skills and/or a lack of stamina for sustained silent reading.

The reading efficiency subtest uses the MAZE format to measure silent reading comprehension.

MAZE items build a passage sentence by sentence and ask students to select the appropriate word in context to complete the sentence.

This subtest takes into account both comprehension and fluency of silent reading.

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Reading Comprehension

31-32 items

20-30 min

Reading Comprehension is the ability to understand text by building an accurate mental model. This skill includes understanding the literal meaning, as well as making cross sentence or passage inferences. Below grade level performance indicates that the student is lacking in one or more foundational reading skills. Since reading comprehension is the overall goal of reading, it is imperative for any diagnostic reading assessment to include an overall comprehension measure.

The reading comprehension subtest uses three types of items to measure basic reading comprehension: literal comprehension, making inferences, and understanding vocabulary in context.

Literal comprehension items ask students to go back in the passage and connect the text to the question.

Making inferences items ask students to make connections across the text.

Understanding vocabulary in context items ask students to construct word meaning based on words within given sentences.

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ReadBasix Success Stories: District Literacy Wins

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Cloquet Secondary Schools

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Capti ReadBasix: Adolescent Literacy Assessment for Secondary Students

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