This article discusses methods for evaluating students' content-area literacy skills. Four specific factors that affect content-area literacy are described: vocabulary knowledge, topic knowledge, text structure knowledge, and textbook readability, along with methods of evaluating each of the factors. Most of these methods have not yet been empirically tested to determine how reliable and valid they are for assessment purposes. Teachers of students with and without disabilities, therefore, are encouraged to interpret the results of these methods cautiously and to use a combination of techniques for triangulation on students' content area literacy skills.
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