Examining the technical adequacy and efficacy of FABLe to identify students at-risk for reading difficulties in India

This paper addresses the need for effective curriculum-based measures (CBMs) to assess foundational literacy skills in India. It seeks to answer the questions: What is the reliability and validity of the FABLe app in the Indian context? What is the efficacy of the FABLe app in identifying students who are at-risk for reading difficulties? There are currently no tools in place that can be used to screen and monitor early reading skills in elementary grades. We present data from a pilot study on India’s first digital CBM tool, Fluency Assessment for Benchmarking in Literacy education (FABLe), to screen for and identify students at-risk for reading difficulties. This study was conducted in Mumbai, India, and participants included students in Grade 3 attending an English medium private school. It serves three primary goals within the Indian context: (a) to examine reliability and validity data supporting the use of the tool; (b) to compare FABLe scores to teacher judgment; and (c) to identify the correct words per minute and accuracy levels below which students were identified as being at-risk. These metrics are presented as an initial step towards developing preliminary CBM benchmarks for India.