The Impact of Rapid Automatized Naming and Phonological Awareness on the Reading Fluency of a Minority Student Population

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) on the reading fluency (RF) of students from traditionally underrepresented groups. The study included 86 participants attending 1st through 4th grade within an inner-city charter school located in a high-poverty, urban environment. The majority of participants were of African American descent (97%). This study moved beyond previous research by employing structural equation modeling to investigate the relationship between RAN, PA, and RF. The results from the analyses suggested that RAN and PA were valid and reliable predictors of participants' RF. RAN was also found to account for more variance in the prediction of reading fluency than phonological awareness alone. The results also suggest that RAN is a member of the phonological awareness family, within this homogenous population; thus, the double-deficit hypothesis was not supported. Further, the findings from the study provide support for the use of RAN assessments to identify students at-risk for reading difficulty; however, the results suggest that teachers should focus classroom-based interventions on the acquisition and development of PA skills—in contrast to improving RAN-based skills.