1  Overview

The Multitudes literacy screening assessment and platform was developed by a multidisciplinary team within an academic non-profit context at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in collaboration with multiple universities and research centers. All items on the 32 new parallel assessments available in English and Spanish were uniquely designed, tested, and incorporated into the platform by this team over three years, with funding from the California state legislature. The Spanish and English measures attend to the salient features of each language as well as cultural relevance, promoting fairness in testing and acknowledging the influence of cultural and language on assessment performance. 

The development and norming process was conducted with more than 5,000 kindergarten, first, and second-grade students across California from 2022 to 2024. Given our unique affiliation within an academic research institution, the Multitudes screener is not a static tool–as more data is collected, Multitudes continues to be updated, refined, and improved. This technical manual describes the development process and technical adequacy of all the measures included in the current Multitudes suite of assessments.