Understanding Your Reading Assessment Results

The Online Reading Tutor screening assessment is the first stage of our app: a 5-to-10-minute screener designed to flag specific reading difficulties and estimate dyslexia risk, with results delivered by email right after your learner finishes.

Here’s how to read what comes back.

Risk levels

The assessment sorts readers into three risk categories:

High Risk: “Very strong indicators that your learner has a reading delay or dyslexia.” Learners in this range show significant decoding difficulty: the way they process written language differs notably from fluent readers, making learning to read difficult and frustrating, with a high likelihood of dyslexia.

Low Risk: “Strong indicators that your learner has a reading delay or dyslexia.” These learners have some decoding difficulty and process written language more slowly than fluent readers, which affects comprehension and points to a higher-than-typical likelihood of a reading delay.

Pass (No Risk): No strong indicators of decoding issues, though reading speed that’s still slow or inconsistent can affect comprehension even when decoding itself looks solid.

Error types

The detailed results PDF breaks incorrect answers down into three categories:

Visual errors (eye icon): answers that were wrong because of how your learner’s brain processed what they were looking at. A classic example: reading “was” as “saw.”

Auditory errors (volume icon): answers that were wrong because of how your learner’s brain processed what they were hearing, often pointing to letter-sound connections that haven’t been fully established yet.

Timeout errors (clock icon): cases where your learner couldn’t process the information within the time given, which speaks to decoding fluency rather than accuracy.

Putting the results to use

Ask for accommodations at school. Results can support a request for classroom accommodations: extended test time, for example, is a natural fit for a learner with a lot of timeout errors.

Bring them to an IEP, IPRC, or 504 Plan meeting. The report can help support a case for an Individualized Education Plan or 504 Plan (US), or an IPRC designation (Canada).

Use them to target home practice. Reviewing the error pattern shows you exactly which words and letter combinations need the most reinforcement during reading time at home.

A screener isn’t a diagnosis, but it’s a fast, concrete starting point for understanding where your learner needs support, and for making sure they get it.

Take our free 10-minute screener if you haven’t already, and see exactly where your learner stands.