Children who start school behind in mathematics are at risk of staying behind throughout schooling and into adulthood.Unfortunately, there is no consensus on the best criteria for the early identification of these at-risk students.Using a unique firstto 10th-grade study of academic development (n = 445), we assessed the sensitivity and specificity of different ability-achievement and achievement-only criteria for identifying risk of mathematics learning difficulties and adolescent innumeracy.The outcome criterion was based on the risk of innumeracy in 10th grade (<25th mathematics percentile).The achievementonly cutoffs were mathematics scores below the 10th to 35th percentile (at 5 percentile increments, inclusive) in first grade and across first and second grades and teacher-reported in-class attentive behavior.The best combination of sensitivity (.589) and specificity (.878) was found for an achievement cutoff below the 25th percentile in first grade.We then examined growth in mathematics from first to 10th grade for different at-risk and typically achievement groups using latent change score models.The models revealed that at-risk students were behind their peers in first grade, with a widening gap across the school years.However, not all at-risk students were identified, indicating that additional factors need to be considered in follow-up studies.Until that time, low-achieving first graders, independent of cognitive ability, attentive behavior, and parental socioeconomic status, are at risk for longterm difficulties in mathematics and innumeracy in adolescence.
Ferrer et al. (Thu,) studied this question.