What do the Deficit/Emerging/Established and Risk labels mean?
The Deficit/Emerging/Established labels are used once you’ve reached the grade and time where a student should have mastered the skill in question. The risk category labels are used before that to describe the risk of the student not reaching that goal. For example, if a student is “At-Risk” on ISF at the Beginning of Kindergarten, that means that the student will have a hard time reaching the “Established” goal for ISF of 25 initial sounds per minute in the Middle of Kindergarten. Letter Naming Fluency and Oral Reading Fluency only use the risk categories and never use the Deficit/Emerging/Established labels. Letter Naming Fluency doesn’t have a final benchmark goal; it’s always just an indicator of risk.
