Groundbreaking Test Introduces a New Way to Assess Students' Language and Literacy Skills

BALTIMORE, Oct. 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Now available from Brookes Publishing, the new Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills™ (TILLS™) is a reliable, valid assessment that tests curriculum-relevant oral and written language skills in students ages 6–18 years. TILLS™ measures integrated language-literacy abilities that reflect the complex demands of today's general education curricula.

TILLS™ is the only test that assesses oral and written language with a unique framework that shows how these skills relate to each other. Backed by unparalleled data, TILLS™ was standardized to identify language/literacy disorders, document patterns of relative strengths and weaknesses, and track changes over time.  Through 15 subtests, TILLS™ gives speech-language pathologists, reading specialists, school psychologists, and other professionals an accurate, detailed profile of students' language and literacy skills.

"For the first time, teams in schools and private practitioners will have a scientifically sound tool for documenting the relationships between language disorders and reading disorders, problems that are actually intertwined," said co-developer Nickola Nelson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP.  

Professionals often must patch together and compare test items from different assessments normed on different populations. TILLS™ covers the full range of oral and written language skills and shows strong data at each age level, which means professionals can be confident in their diagnostic results. "TILLS™ looks at reading, writing, and language in more depth than any other assessment I have used," said school psychologist Elizabeth DeBoer.  "I am thrilled to use TILLS™ to help identify academic problems of my students with learning disabilities." 

TILLS™ was developed by Nickola Nelson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Elena Plante, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Nancy Helm-Estabrooks, Sc.D., CCC-SLP, and Gillian Hotz, Ph.D., CCC-SLP. Research behind TILLS™ was supported by a nearly $2M grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences to Western Michigan University, 2010-2015. 

For more information, visit www.brookespublishing.com/tills.

About Brookes Publishing

Brookes is the premier publisher of research-based resources that boost the learning and success of all people, with and without disabilities. www.brookespublishing.com.

The standardization research for the TILLS™ was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R324A100354 to Western Michigan University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or of the U.S. Department of Education.

Contact: Sharon Larkin, Brookes Publishing
410-337-9580 x151; [email protected]

SOURCE Brookes Publishing

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