On Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the selection of four reading risk assessments.
The screeners will be used to identify learning challenges to elementary school students in grades spanning from kindergarten to second grade.
The four screeners are:
- Multitudes, created by UC San Francisco’s Dyslexia Center;
- Amira, created by Amira Learning and uses AI Tools;
- mCLASS, published by Amplify Education, a nationwide educational program;
- ROAR, the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading, created by Stanford’s Reading and Dyslexia research program.
They will test students’ phonemic awareness (identifying how words sound), decoding abilities, and vocabulary.
Three of the four screeners are available in English and Spanish, with ROAR being available only in English and excludes kindergarten.
Although these will be important tools, the results will not be considered as a formal academic diagnosis.
