Dyslexia Assessment Expert for K-8 Screener Review & Critique

We are building a K–8 dyslexia screener from the ground up and we need someone to tell us where we are wrong. We have a specification list of capabilities — every construct we intend to measure, how each task is presented to the student, what signal it produces, how it is scored, and what we have deliberately refused to build. It was assembled from the 2025 IDA definition revision, NCII classification-accuracy criteria, state screening statutes, and the peer-reviewed literature. It has been through two independent research passes. It has not been through a human who has actually administered these instruments to real children. That is this job. We want to hire two experts who reads our list and says "you are missing X, and this row does not hold up, and this claim over-reaches the evidence." We are not looking for validation. We are looking for the things we cannot see. What you would actually do Read the whole specification and mark it up. We want the review done against the complete battery, not a sample — a large part of what we are paying for is what is absent, and you cannot see an absence from an extract. Two passes we care about most: Row by row. What is sound, what is wrong, what over-claims its evidence, what is the wrong task format for the age. Whole battery. What construct is missing entirely. What is in there that should not be. Where the grade-band split (K–3 versus 4–8) is drawn in the wrong place. Then ongoing review as the design develops — scoring boundaries, cut-point logic, accommodation handling, and the validation plan. Deliverable format. Comments against numbered rows in a shared sheet, plus a short written summary of the battery-level problems. Direct English, no formatting ceremony. Where you disagree, say what you are disagreeing from — a study, a standard, or specific administration experience. "In my experience" is welcome as long as you say with how many children and in what setting. Who we are looking for Deep working knowledge of early literacy and dyslexia assessment — not only intervention. You have personally administered, interpreted, or helped build screening or diagnostic reading instruments. Examples of the world you should be fluent in: DIBELS 8, Acadience, aimswebPlus, CTOPP-2, TOWRE-2, WJ, KTEA, PALS, or equivalents outside the US. You can reason about classification accuracy, base rates, cut points, and ceiling effects — not just about what a good task looks like. You have opinions about what the field gets wrong, and you can defend them. Credentials that often fit: school psychologist with a literacy specialization; reading scientist or literacy researcher; CALT or equivalent with assessment depth; SLP with a strong literacy assessment background; former assessment-publisher staff on the reading side. None of these is required if you can demonstrate the reasoning. Who this is not for Tutors and interventionists without assessment design experience. Anyone whose answer to a measurement question is a programme name. Anyone who needs the brief re-explained before having a view. Terms Remote, asynchronous, your own hours. NDA before the full spec is shared. Ongoing work available for the right person — this is the first of several review passes, and the same person would be our standing reviewer through build and validation. We would rather pay one expert properly across the whole project than run a trial process. THE EXTRACT (for the questions) M09 · Phonemic awareness. The child hears "cat" through headphones, sees three pictures, taps the one starting with the same sound. Later and harder: hears "sand", then "say sand without the /s/." Our note in the sheet: "THE kindergarten predictor — and effectively dead by grade 3, because by then nearly every child can do it and the task stops separating anyone. Do not carry it into the older battery." Grade band assigned: K–3 only. M06 · Morphological awareness. The child sees the word "farm", then "A person who farms is a ___?" with four choices — farmer / farming / farmed / farmly. Later: "unhappy" and "which part means NOT?" Our note: "By about age 10 this predicts reading better than hearing sounds does." We promoted this to first-release on the strength of a 2026 JAMA Network Open cohort (N = 515) in which kindergarten morphological-awareness deficits raised grade-4 dyslexia odds 3.52×. M04 · Compensated readers. The child reads a matched word list twice — once against a visible 45-second countdown, once with no clock at all. Normal untimed accuracy combined with bottom-5% timed speed is flagged as compensation. Grade band assigned: 4–8. Our full construct battery, as it currently stands: letter naming fluency · letter–sound knowledge · phonemic awareness · phonological memory (nonword repetition) · invented spelling · print concepts · real-word and nonword reading efficiency (timed) · timed-versus-untimed discrepancy · rapid automatized naming · morphological awareness · spelling error type · listening comprehension · dynamic assessment (learning rate).