Assessment of Story Comprehension (ASC™)

A fast, easy way to measure the story comprehension of children ages 3–5. Strong 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™), pre-K programs can now 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. Sensitive to even small gains that young learners make as the school year progresses, the ASC— with its 3-minute administration time—is the quick, reliable check programs need to assess comprehension.

Overview of the Assessment of Story Comprehension

• 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 when comprehension has meaningfully improved
• 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

About the Authors

Trina D. Spencer, Ph.D., BCBA-D

Associate Professor, Department of Child and Family Studies, University of South Florida

For more than 18 years, Dr. Spencer has worked with culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse children as well as children with disabilities, their teachers, and their families.

Howard Goldstein, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Associate Dean of Research and Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Florida

Dr. Goldstein is a nationally known scholar for his research in the field of child language intervention.

Introduction to the Assessment of Story Comprehension

Reading comprehension is one of the most important skills for success in school and relies on decoding and language comprehension. Decoding consists of sounding out words using phonics and whole word recognition strategies. Alphabet knowledge, print knowledge, and phonological awareness are the fundamental components that emerge in early childhood. Language comprehension joins with decoding to ensure understanding of written material and depends on several interrelated skills, such as vocabulary knowledge, inference making, knowledge of syntax and grammar, and background knowledge.

Preschool children are not yet readers. Research suggests, however, that language comprehension is an effective proxy of reading comprehension. Comprehension after listening to a story is essentially the same as comprehension after reading a story, meaning educators who teach language comprehension are also teaching reading comprehension.

Many explicit oral language programs have become available for use in early childhood classrooms. The Assessment of Story Comprehension (ASC) was designed to support oral language interventions and programs with preschoolers. The ASC measures children’s language comprehension abilities and assists educators in making decisions about language interventions for young children. With appropriate and timely assessment, proper language interventions can be deployed to prepare children for elementary school and prevent reading comprehension problems in middle childhood.

Purposes of the ASC and Curriculum-Based Measurement

Proper assessment and regular monitoring are essential components of an effective intervention program. Assessment results help educators identify children who would benefit from additional instruction, make adjustments when needed, and determine how a child is progressing in relation to the intervention. Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is one category of assessments that is well suited to help educators link assessment to intervention.

The ASC serves three major purposes:

1. Identify children who can benefit from supplemental language intervention.
2. Monitor children’s progress regularly.
3. Determine when children’s language comprehension improves to a meaningful degree.

Technical Adequacy

We examined the ASC’s validity and reliability with preschool children. The ASC measures children’s ability to comprehend stories, integrating both linguistic composition and background knowledge necessary to answer questions.

Key Characteristics of the ASC

1. Measures an authentic and socially important outcome—children’s ability to comprehend stories.
2. Includes multiple parallel forms for repeated sampling.
3. Standardized administration and scoring procedures are simple and efficient.
4. Sensitive to growth related to language intervention.

Conclusion

The ASC is highly valid and reliable, and it is the key to assessing and improving an essential building block of reading success and school readiness. It can be used on its own as a fast, efficient check or in tandem with the other products in the MILLIE™ (Multitiered Interventions for Language & Literacy in Early Childhood) product suite. Together, these products boost reading readiness by addressing oral language skills, vocabulary, phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and comprehension.