Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is widely used to support early identification, screening, and progress monitoring of students at risk for reading difficulties; however, CBM measures developed specifically for Arabic early literacy remain limited. The present study aimed to develop Arabic early literacy CBM measures and examine their technical adequacy and initial evidence of validity within Arabic instructional contexts. Specifically, the study evaluated whether CBM measures differentiate performance between first- and second-grade students and discriminate among students with differing levels of reading performance. Four CBM measures assessing letter-naming fluency, letter-sound fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, and word-reading fluency were administered to 428 first- and second-grade Arabic-speaking students. Results indicated that the developed CBM measures showed high, clear differentiation of performance across grade levels, as well as discrimination among levels of reading performance. Collectively, these findings provide initial evidence supporting the technical adequacy of the Arabic CBM measures for use in early literacy screening and progress monitoring while underscoring the need for future research to accumulate stronger validity evidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Saeed S. Alqahtani (Mon,) studied this question.