Construct and Predictive Validity Evidence for Curriculum-Based Measures of Early Literacy and Numeracy Skills in Kindergarten

Abstract

The assessment of early literacy and numeracy skills can provide useful and important information in pursuance of the goal to increase student academic achievement. At present, there have been promising results using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) for evaluating early literacy and early numeracy. There has been little research investigating the use of both early literacy and numeracy CBM-type skills assessments in a comprehensive battery. This research extends previous research by investigating the internal validity of an assessment battery of literacy and numeracy skills assessed at the end of kindergarten and external validity in the form of predictive validity for second-grade outcomes in reading and mathematics. Results suggest that correlated factors representing early literacy and numeracy skills are being measured. Evidence of convergent and incremental predictive validity with respect to later reading and mathematics outcomes was strong, but discriminant validity was not substantiated.