Since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, teachers and parents have witnessed a series of heated debates on the most basic issues of literacy assessment-what to assess and how to assess it. In particular, the controversy rages over DIBELS and OSELA, two popular early literacy assessment instruments. The purpose of this article is to address the…

This issue highlights six distinct studies. The first study examines the inclusion of literacy props and teacher mediation on the literacy behaviors of young children. The second explores the relationship of amount of talk, diversity of talk, and complexity of talk on the language acquisition of young preschool children who are learning a second…

Reports on a battery of oral language and early literacy tests, called the SHELL. Describes the tests, presents tasks and scoring system, and provides information about performance by participants in the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development. Descriptive, correlational, and predictive analyses based on SHELL-K (kindergarten) and…