Research has shown that educators may be missing an under-identified population of approximately 10 percent of typically developing children, who have fluent, age-appropriate decoding and word recognition skills, yet have specific difficulties with other higher-level text processing factors. These children are said to have specific comprehension deficits. Since academic and consequently future success depends upon proficient text processing, early identification of text comprehension problems is critical in furthering children's progress and remediating these difficulties. This three-manuscript dissertation is focused on the identification of children with specific comprehension deficits using standardized assessments. In particular, it explores alternative screening procedures to simplify the assessment for identification of these children. In the first manuscript, I present a review of the literature that examines the theoretical and empirical research in order to determine how specific comprehension deficits in children have previously been identified and assessed in the research. Manuscript 2 describes the theoretical conceptualization and development of a researcher-designed tool to screen children for specific comprehension issues and provides preliminary evidence of the screener's technical adequacy. Finally, Manuscript 3 documents the research conducted to assess and predict specific comprehension deficits in a third grade sample of 303 children, using two screening instruments, one for word reading and one for higher-order linguistic comprehension. Results showed that classification accuracy using the screeners was not as informative as using the standardized assessments. Although the results proved inconclusive at this time, the study recognizes that the screening and classification of children should happen first, informing educators of problems in this domain. Only after this is accomplished can interventions be implemented and further diagnostic measures be used to pinpoint exactly where children's issues lie. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]