The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which recognized predictors of reading success accounted for individual differences in end-of-year reading achievement as well as rate of progress through the Breakthrough to Literacy (BTL) program. The present study tracked the progress of 50 kindergarten children from two different elementary schools in a mid-size Midwestern city. The children entered kindergarten with different levels of early reading skills and cognitive skills as well as demographic characteristics. During the first few weeks of kindergarten, the children completed tests of letter identification, word identification, non-word identification, phonological awareness, and rapid naming. Participants also completed a brief cognitive screening so that the role of cognitive ability in the growth of reading skills could be explored. Each month throughout the school year, information on the progress of each child in the program was generated by the BTL computer component. Finally, at the end of the school year, participants again completed tests of letter identification, word and non-word identification, and phonological awareness.

Results indicated that letter name identification at pretest was the best predictor of decoding ability at posttest as measured by the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised (WRMT-R) Word Identification subtest. Additionally, those children entering kindergarten with higher Word Identification scores progressed through the BTL computer component at a faster pace than those children with lower scores. The results of a multiple regression analysis indicated that of the three scores on a brief cognitive screening (Word Reasoning subtest, Matrix Reasoning subtest, and Deviation IQ), Deviation IQ explained 16% of the variance in Word Identification (posttest). The importance of these results to educators is discussed.