This document discusses diagnostic reading assessments. It explains that reading is a fundamental skill and assessments are needed to determine if instruction is effective, identify students who need intervention, and inform how to intervene. Assessments evaluate oral reading skills like rate and errors, reading comprehension in literal, inferential and critical thinking, word attack through phonics and context clues, word recognition, and other related skills. Several specific assessments are described, including the GRADE which provides growth scores, DIBELS which screens phonemic awareness and reading skills, and TOPA-2+ which measures early reading skills.