Listening comprehension during shared storybook reading is a foundational skill--and an indicator that children are ready for the language demands of kindergarten. With the Assessment of Story Comprehension (ASC(TM)), pre-K programs finally have a fast, easy way to measure the story comprehension of children ages 3-5, identify children who may need language intervention, monitor progress, and determine when comprehension has meaningfully improved. A quick check that takes just 3 minutes to complete, the ASC is the sensitive, reliable tool that programs need to test the comprehension skills of all young learners and pick up even small improvements as the school year progresses.

Your comprehensive guide to the ASC, this manual includes

• an introduction to the tool, its development, and its supporting research
• detailed administration guidelines, including sample schedules for administering the ASC
• general and item specific scoring guidelines
• frequently asked scoring questions, including examples of how to score ambiguous responses
• fidelity checklists and guidance on establishing and maintaining reliability
• a guide to interpreting scores, including typical score ranges for children ages 3-4 and 4-5
• two practice sets of materials for use in training examiners

Learn more about ASC
Learn more about the complete Multitiered Interventions for Language & Literacy in Early Childhood (MILLIE) product suite.
About the Author:
Dr. Spencer is an associate professor at the University of South Florida in the Department of Child and Family Studies. She earned a specialist degree in School Psychology and a Ph.D. in Disability Disciplines from Utah State University, with emphases in language and literacy and early childhood special education. She has been a board-certified behavior analyst since 2001. Dr. Spencer has worked with culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse children as well as children with disabilities, their teachers, and their families for 18 years. She has published 37 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 5 book chapters, and 22 non-peer reviewed articles, briefs, or encyclopedia entries. Her publications and editorial service span a number of disciplines, including speech-language pathology, early childhood education, special education, applied linguistics, and school psychology. Benefitting from strong collaborations with practitioners and other researchers, Dr. Spencer maintains a spirited research agenda to improve reading comprehension and academic outcomes of the nation's most vulnerable students. Specifically, she has developed dynamic screening, curriculum-based measurement, and intervention tools so that schools can implement an efficient multi-tiered system of language support to complement schools' decoding efforts. Finally, Dr. Spencer promotes interdisciplinary, collaborative relationships among clinicians, educators, and researchers through an evidence-based practice framework.

Howard Goldstein, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is a nationally known scholar in the field of child language intervention research and the author of two books and more than 100 scholarly articles. His recent work has sought to enhance the language and literacy development of students in high poverty schools who are at high risk for language and reading disabilities. A certified speech-language pathologist and former ASHA Vice President for Science and Research, Dr. Goldstein is currently Associate Dean of Research and Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences at University of South Florida in Tampa.