Teacher ratings (Gregory & Oetting, 2018) GregoryKyomi D. OettingJanna B. 2018 <div><b>Purpose: </b>We compared teacher ratings as measured by the Teacher Rating of Oral Language and Literacy (TROLL; Dickinson, McCabe, & Sprague, 2001, 2003) and Children’s Communication Checklist–Second Edition (CCC-2; Bishop, 2006) to 2 established screeners, the Part II of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation–Screening Test (DELV-ST-II; Seymour, Roeper, & de Villiers, 2003) and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills–Next (DIBELS; Good, Gruba, & Kaminski, 2009), and then examined whether teacher ratings alone or when combined with the DELV-ST-II or DIBELS accurately classify nonmainstream English-speaking kindergartners by their clinical status.</div><div><b>Method:</b> Data came from 98 children who lived in the rural South; 47 spoke African American English, and 51 spoke Southern White English. Using the syntax subtest of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation–Norm Referenced (Seymour, Roeper, & de Villiers, 2005) as the reference standard, 43 were language impaired and 55 were typically developing. Analyses included analysis of variance, correlations, and discriminant function with sensitivity and specificity indices.</div><div><b>Results:</b> The TROLL, CCC-2, DELV-ST-II, and DIBELS showed clinical status but not dialect effects, and they correlated with each other, the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation–Norm Referenced, and other language measures. Classification accuracies of all 4 tools were too low for screening purposes; however, empirically derived cut scores improved the results, and a discriminant function selected the TROLL and DELV-ST-II as optimal for determining who should be referred for an evaluation, with the TROLL yielding the highest level of sensitivity (77%).</div><div><b>Conclusion: </b>Findings support teacher ratings as measured by the TROLL when screening nonmainstream English-speaking kindergartners for language impairment in the rural South, while also calling for additional development and study of teacher rating tools and other screening instruments.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S1.</b> Raw data and various accuracy indices for tools using empirically derived cut scores: dialects combined. </div><div><br></div><div>Gregory, K. D., & Oetting, J. B. (2018). Classification accuracy of teacher ratings when screening nonmainstream English-speaking kindergartners for language impairment in the rural South. <i>Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 49, </i>218–231. https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_LSHSS-17-0045</div>