Literacy Links

Success Stories

What's new with LINCS and National Institute
for Literacy?
Assessment Strategies and Reading Profiles
- an Interactive Web Site

This new web site was funded by NIFL's Partnership for Reading project, through a grant to the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL). The web site is for adult education practitioners on the DIAGNOSTIC assessment of reading with ABE (adult basic education) learners. On this interactive site, teachers are able to find out about a learner's reading strengths and needs when they enter a learner's scores on a few reading sub-skills. The learner is matched to one of 11 groups of ABE participants from NCSALL's Adult Reading Component Study (ARCS) who show a similar pattern of scores. Information about the matched ARCS group highlights the focus of instruction for the learner being assessed. The site also offers a mini-course in reading, resources and references to research.

NIFL's LINCS (Literacy Information aNd Communication System) Regional Technology Centers assisted NCSALL in recruiting focus group members to test and evaluate the site this summer. Results of the focus group should result in even more improvements in the site's design and usefulness for practitioners.

Try the site at http://www.nifl.gov/readingprofiles/ and give NCSALL your feedback by calling Research Associate Rosalind Davidson at: (617) 496-8952.