Technical Manual
Version 2.0
Lillian Durán, Ph.D. 
Mónica Zegers, Ph.D.
Julian M. Siebert, Ph.D.
Cengiz Zopluoglu, Ph.D.
Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini, M.D. Ph.D.
Executive Summary
Multitudes is funded by the State of California with the primary goal of creating culturally and linguistically responsive measures that are both suitable for use and reflective of the diverse population of children across the state. The Multitudes digital platform includes a universal screener, additional follow-up assessments, professional development resources, and intervention suggestions— all available at no cost to California public schools. The goal of the screening tasks is to identify students in grades kindergarten through grade 2 who may develop reading problems, including dyslexia. The tasks were developed, calibrated, and validated over a three year period, from spring of 2022 to spring of 2025, with over 5,000 children across the state. The battery of assessments is available in Spanish and English and covers the domains of language, phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, reading and spelling, processing speed/automaticity, auditory short-term memory, and visuo-spatial processing.
The administration of the Multitudes tasks follows a two-step process. The first step is a short screening battery lasting ten to fifteen minutes, and consisting of three to four tasks found to be the most predictive of reading performance in each grade. Additional targeted assessment tasks are available to further explore children’s strengths and needs across learning domains. These tasks provide actionable information for more effective classroom and individualized support strategies.
The screening is administered in a one-on-one format via two linked digital devices, with results immediately available on the administrator’s dashboard.
Acknowledgements
The Multitudes project is a collaborative effort, made possible by the dedication and expertise of many individuals. We want to extend our sincere thanks to the large, multidisciplinary team for their invaluable contributions: Gabriella Parham-Cruzado, Javier Jasso, Amy Pratt, Melissa Brown, Minerva Meese for measure and intervention development. Mahalakshmi Ramamurthy and Jason Yeatman for visuo-spatial measure development. Hugh Catts, Yaacov Petscher, Jason Yeatman, John Gabrieli, Fumiko Hoeft, Nuria Gutiérrez, Julie Washington, Maryanne Wolf, Brandy Gatlin Nash, Eric Falke, Rebecca Silverman, Ashley Sanabria, Benjamin Domingue, and Aaron Scheffler for guidance and feedback. Phaedra Bell and Andrea Lynn Hartsough for leadership in partnership building, operations, and insight into diversity, inclusion, and representation; Meredith Kalmes, Jessica Clyne, Lucienne Vintaer, and Melina Flores for implementation and operational support. Elise Brenner, Joe Hess and the Vynyl team for platform development and technical support; Jeremy Lichtmacher, Chris Campbell, Anson Wong, Regina Juarez, Jesus Alfaro, Karla Santamaria, Nuvia Soto and Gabrielle Fall for task development technical support.
We are deeply grateful to our many partner schools, whose collaboration and participation were vital for the successful implementation and testing of the Multitudes platform. Teachers, children, families, school administrators, local education agencies and communities participated generously not only in the implementation, but also as active co-designers. We appreciate the efforts of all proctors from around the State of California who assisted with data collection, partnership building and operations. We also thank the dedicated members of our Advisory Council and Intervention Task Force.
We would also like to thank collaborators who contributed specifically to the Technical Manual: Lucy Yan for data analysis and presentation; Mahalakshmi Ramamurthy and Jason Yeatman for visuo-spatial measure descriptions; Benjamin W. Domingue for statistical support.
Copyrights
© 2026 UCSF Multitudes. This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0”.