Message from the President, Philip Young:

On May 18, 2018, Governor Henry McMaster signed into law Act 213, which calls for the creation of a Learning Disorders Task Force. The task force is comprised of education and medical professionals who work with the department in matters related to reading difficulties. I have the privilege of representing SCASP and school psychologists and currently serve as one of the Co-Chairs of the Taskforce. Last year we worked to create a list of criteria and screeners that met the criteria to meet the universal screening requirements outlined in Act 213 which requires all districts to screen all 5K and 1st-grade students for reading difficulties.

After receiving guidance from the National Center on Intensive Intervention and reviewing existing research and information, including survey data about instruments currently in used in districts, the task force developed the following selection criteria for universal screeners. The task force will review the list of appropriate screening instruments annually.

Criteria for Selecting Screeners

Must meet all 4 requirements

• The screener must be brief
• The screener must contain normative data for cut points
• The screener must screen for dyslexia and have the ability to progress monitor the abilities/skills mentioned below.
• The screener must measure all the following abilities/skills:

1. Alphabetic Principle (Letter-Sound Relationships)
2. Alphabet Knowledge (Letter-Naming)
3. Phonological Awareness
4. Fluency (1st/2nd grade only)

Screening Tools that Met the Criteria

• FASTBridge (Early Reading)
• mCLASS
• DIBELS Next/ Acadience Reading
• DIBELS 8th Edition and 6th Edition (Free materials downloads for 6th and 8th edition) (Meets criteria for both 6th and 8th editions)
• AIMSweb
• easyCBM
• iSTEEP (Meets all areas)

The taskforce has 4 meetings per year and information about upcoming meetings and how to provide public comment can be found on the state department of education website or by following this link: https://ed.sc.gov/instruction/early-learning-and-literacy/learning-disorders-task-force/

If you are a SCASP member head over to our archive of the newsletters in the members section to read the rest of this article and all that is included in the latest edition of School Psych Scene.

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