The Bracken school readiness assessment is a set of tools for assessing, screening, and tracking children to help teachers identify learners who are ready to succeed. Bracken is a family of assessments in concept development. The Bracken assessments differ in focus and item type. Together, they provide a powerful set of tools for a child’s concept formation and academic success.
The Bracken Test is a family of assessments, including the BBCS-3:R, BBCS-E, and BSRA-3. These assessments are used to reliably identify children with delays in concept formation or other areas of development.
What is the Bracken Test?
The Bracken School Readiness Assessment is a set of assessment tools which reflect aspects of childhood development, including children’s early speech/language development, communication, problem solving, and early mathematics achievement. The Bracken assessments include information to identify early need for special education services.
The Bracken assessment requires no preparation time. The assessment is brief and can be completed by anyone.
Section 2: Do I have any questions about the Bracken School Readiness Assessment?
The Bracken Test is easy to administer and is highly accurate. It can be administered at the school level, the home, or even at a community center. For some people, the reading test is a little challenging.
The Available Bracken Tests
While most parents are familiar with the Bracken Preschool Evaluation and Child Profile, this particular assessment is really designed for two year olds, but it is a really good indicator of what kind of language, thinking, and problem solving skills one has already developed at this age.
It may be helpful for educators to run the assessment with an individual student, so they can get a more personalized response to some of their questions about the learner, and they will have the opportunity to see their child demonstrate some of these advanced skills.
How do I run the Bracken test?
When you run the Bracken test with data collected from two or more children you will get a combined score that reflects the total scores of the children. This score can be interpreted as follows:
The first number represents the amount of items answered correctly. The second number represents the amount of incorrect responses. For example: a child completes a Bracken test with 30+ correct answers and 7 incorrect, and the score will be 30+.
Similarly, the first number represents the number of items answered correctly and the second represents the number of questions answered correctly. The score for each question is the number of correct responses.
The Benefits of Running the Bracken Test
The Bracken Test screens to see whether a child is ready to succeed in kindergarten or first grade. By incorporating two types of measurements, Bracken can help to make the case that the child’s academic or behavioral needs may require additional intervention or testing. In addition, a screening questionnaire can help the teacher and parents have an early start in understanding what are strengths and weaknesses in your child.
The Benefits of running the Bracken Math component
A screening survey will help the teacher and parents assess the child’s strengths and weaknesses before applying for special education or moving them into the gifted program. The survey also gives a strong indicator of what kind of learning material is best suited to support the student.
How Does the Bracken Test Work?
The Bracken assessments begin with a video assessment, designed to determine your child’s age, vocabulary, and motor skills.
From there, a series of 32 questions determine your child’s reading ability and/or problem-solving skills, including:
Reading fluency (saying what you mean as well as getting the meaning).
Writing fluency (forming the right word after a group of similar words).
Multimedia based conceptual reasoning (applying a concept to a concrete situation).
A final series of questions determines math skills.
Teachers use the Bracken to assess and track children to identify learners who may be struggling early on in school, and perhaps even remediate those learners before they fall too far behind.
It’s Not a Pass/Fail Test
The Bracken test is not a pass/fail test.
Limitations of the Bracken Test
The Bracken test is primarily a research tool designed to find objective indicators of child readiness. It does not provide diagnosis. It does not provide reliable information about underlying pathology or cause of the disability.
The Bracken test does not capture complete information on a child’s literacy. It is not designed for writing skills. It does not include imagery. It does not include signs of dyslexia.
The Bracken test is based on a five-point “average child competence” scale, and there is a wide range of estimated ranges for the normative ranges, since the test is not for diagnostic purposes.
Many of the questions do not provide specific guidance to teachers about how to conduct a reading intervention.
There is no information about age of child.
What Are The Pros & Cons of the Bracken Test?
In addition to a functioning, three-part test, the Bracken assessment consists of several sheets that help educators understand how each child learns. This section includes data about:
Engagement – What content does the child read?
Expression – How do children interpret what they are reading?
Effect – How much does it matter to the child?
Effect on Written and Verbal Instruction – What kind of help is needed?
Background Reading – The reading level the child is reading at.
The test can be taken by children in Kindergarten or 1st grade.
The Bracken assessment can be used in conjunction with other tools to confirm that children are ready to learn how to read. The Bracken assessment is scored on a scale from 0-5.
Conclusion
The above resources have been very helpful. I recommend that you consult the resources as a group as it makes understanding each tool more understandable and valuable to you. I hope you find them helpful.
You might also like:
Personal Reading
Gillian McNeill’s top 10 books about raising children.
How Your Child Should Grow
Penny Pines is a stay-at-home mom. You can read more of her work at www.howyoucantmommy.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter @mamasgoingmad.
The Mighty is asking the following: Describe a moment you were at a loss for words. What do you say, or write, when you feel like your language falling short? If you’d like to participate, please send a blog post to [email protected] Please include a photo for the piece, a photo of yourself and 1-2 sentence bio.
This is the story of two parents, Dr. Barbara Wigginton and Dr. Ben Cross. Over 30 years ago, these two Jewish, white parents adopted two black sons from South Carolina. As a follow-up to their adoption, their doctors recommended they see a developmental pediatrician to test the boys’ development to make sure their new boys were adjusting well to their home environment. The boys were evaluated for 18 months, at which time the parents felt they had exhausted all options to help their sons who had severe developmental delay.
Both boys had multiple diagnoses, including dyslexia and language disorder, as well as “oppositional defiant disorder.” One boy was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the other with autism, hyperactivity disorder, and ADD.
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