What is the Feifer Assessment of Reading? The FAR and its four dyslexia subtypes

The Feifer Assessment of Reading, usually shortened to the FAR, is an individually administered reading battery published in 2015 by PAR (Psychological Assessment Resources), written by school neuropsychologist Steven G. Feifer with a professional manual co-authored by Rebecca Gerhardstein Nader. Its distinguishing feature is subtype classification. Where most reading tests report how well a student reads, the FAR is designed to indicate which of four reading-disorder subtypes best fits the shape of a student's scores, on the theory that different patterns call for different instruction. This article covers the age range, the four subtypes, the structure, timing, scoring, the FAR Screening Form, and the evidence behind the subtype idea.

PAR describes the FAR's purpose as examining "the underlying cognitive and linguistic processes that support proficient reading skills," and lists the grade range as prekindergarten through college. The peer-reviewed test review published in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment in 2019 gives the range as ages 4 to 21, a reasonable approximation for school-age examinees even though college students can be older than that.

The design rests on what Feifer calls a "neurodevelopmental" approach, the premise that several distinct neural pathways contribute to reading and that a student can break down at any one of them. According to PAR, the battery samples vocabulary, phonological awareness, decoding, rapid automatic naming, orthographical and morphological processing, word memory, reading fluency in both isolated words and connected text, and comprehension. A student who reads slowly because sound-symbol decoding never became automatic and a student who reads slowly because vocabulary is thin can post similar overall scores while needing very different instruction. The FAR tries to separate those cases.

PAR's fact sheet states that the FAR addresses four specific subtypes of reading disorder.

• Dysphonetic dyslexia: difficulty using sound-symbol correspondence to decode unfamiliar words, so the reader leans on visual word shape and guesswork.

• Surface dyslexia: the reverse pattern, in which decoding is laborious but functional while the automatic, whole-word recognition that makes reading fluent fails to develop.

• Mixed dyslexia: weakness in both phonological and fluency-related processes at once, which PAR describes as the most severe of the profiles.

• Reading comprehension deficits: adequate word reading paired with poor understanding of what was read, often tied to vocabulary, semantic processing or executive function rather than decoding.

One point of confusion worth flagging: PAR uses "dysphonetic dyslexia" in its fact sheet, while a frequently asked question on the same product page calls the identical profile "phonological dyslexia."

PAR describes the FAR as comprising 15 individual subtests, though no single examinee takes all of them. The publisher states that prekindergarten examinees take eight, kindergarten and Grade 1 examinees take 11, and examinees from Grade 2 through college take 14. Examiners can give the full battery, only the subtests tied to a single index, or individual subtests.

Named subtests described in PAR's white paper on skills and error analysis include Phonemic Awareness, Rapid Automatic Naming, Semantic Concepts, Word Recall, Verbal Fluency, Nonsense Word Decoding, Isolated Word Reading Fluency, Oral Reading Fluency, Visual Perception, Irregular Word Reading Fluency, Morphological Processing, Orthographical Processing, Positioning Sounds and Silent Reading Fluency. Several are deliberately paired for comparison. Reading isolated words faster than connected text points to a different problem than the opposite pattern.

Scores roll up into five indexes, according to PAR: Phonological, Fluency, Comprehension, Mixed (a composite of the Phonological and Fluency indexes), and the FAR Total Index (a composite of all subtests administered).

Readers of this site will recognize the score metric. PAR reports that FAR subtest and index scores use the same scale as IQ tests, with the "mean" (the average score in the normative sample) set to 100 and the "standard deviation" (a measure of how spread out scores are) set to 15. A FAR index of 85 sits one standard deviation below average, at roughly the 16th percentile. The battery offers grade-based norms with age proxies, grade and age equivalents for subtest scores, and confidence intervals and percentile ranks for index scores.

PAR reports a standardization sample of 1,074 examinees from prekindergarten through college, drawn from more than 30 states using a population-proportionate stratified random sampling plan based on 2012 U.S. Census statistics, plus clinical samples of more than 120 students with learning problems, ADHD, or intellectual developmental disorder. That is a modest sample spread across a very wide grade span, and the census anchor is now more than a decade old. Median subtest reliability coefficients range from .67 to .95, with most in the upper .80s and .90s. The low end matters: a subtest reliable at .67 carries a wide error band and should not drive a decision on its own.

PAR gives administration times of about 35 minutes for prekindergarten, 60 minutes for kindergarten through Grade 1, and 75 minutes for Grade 2 and above. The comprehensive FAR is given face to face with paper and pencil, though PAR offers an e-Stimulus book option that presents the same materials on a tablet. Hand-scoring the full battery takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes, and PAR's PARiConnect platform will score responses and generate an interpretive report with intervention suggestions keyed to the student's age and score pattern.

A separate FAR Screening Form does exist, sold as its own kit. PAR describes it as identifying students who may be at risk for developmental dyslexia, using three subtests pulled one each from the content indexes: Phonemic Awareness from the Phonological Index, Rapid Automatic Naming from the Fluency Index, and Semantic Concepts from the Comprehension Index. It yields a single composite risk score in about 15 minutes, with another 15 to score, and PAR positions it for response-to-intervention screening rather than diagnosis. A remote videoconference version is available. The full FAR requires a B-level qualification; the Screening Form is an S-level product.

PAR publishes two sibling instruments built on the same subtype logic, the Feifer Assessment of Mathematics and the Feifer Assessment of Writing.

The FAR sits between two other kinds of reading measure, and confusing them wastes time.

• Universal screeners: brief, repeatable, curriculum-based measures given to every student several times a year. Acadience Reading is the familiar example. These take a minute or two per student and flag who is off track. They are not designed to explain why a student is struggling.

• Targeted diagnostic tests: instruments that measure one slice of reading in depth. The GORT-5 measures oral reading rate, accuracy, fluency and comprehension from graded passages, a narrower question than the FAR asks.

• Comprehensive reading batteries: instruments such as the WRMT-III that survey word identification, word attack and comprehension to establish achievement levels across the domain. They cover similar ground to the FAR while reporting achievement levels rather than indexing a subtype.

The subtype layer is what the FAR adds on top, and whether it earns the extra 75 minutes is the question a practitioner has to answer honestly.

PAR reports a predictive validity analysis for learning disability with an overall classification rate of 96.7%. That figure comes from the publisher's own development work, and classification accuracy estimated in the sample used to build a measure almost always shrinks against independent samples. PAR's published literature review is candid about other issues in the research, noting that some FAR items may be confounded by a student's prior knowledge and that some administration rules are difficult for examiners to follow.

The larger caution concerns the premise itself. The FAR is built on the idea that matching instruction to a cognitive profile improves outcomes, and the evidence there is mixed. A meta-analysis of 28 studies by Stuebing and colleagues, published in the Review of Educational Research, examined how well baseline cognitive characteristics predicted children's response to reading intervention. Average correlations across three statistical models were .31, .21 and .15, and the authors concluded that the small size of the effects "calls into question the practical significance and utility of using cognitive characteristics for prediction of response when baseline reading is available." In plain terms, a child's cognitive profile added little once you already knew how well the child read.

None of that makes the FAR a bad test. Its component tasks measure well-validated predictors of reading, phonemic awareness and rapid automatic naming foremost among them, and a careful examiner comes away with a detailed map of where a reader breaks down. The subtype label is best treated as a hypothesis to check against instruction and progress data rather than a settled prescription.

For families arriving here after a reading evaluation, one boundary is worth drawing clearly. The FAR is an achievement measure of reading processes. It does not measure general cognitive ability, and a low FAR index does not imply a low IQ. For a norm-referenced picture of reasoning ability, the RIOT IQ test was developed by RIOT IQ with psychometrician Dr. Russell T. Warne for adults 18 and older. Its full name is the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test, it runs 15 subtests across six cognitive indices covering verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, spatial ability, working memory, processing speed and reaction time, it takes about 52 minutes, and it reports scores on the same mean-100, standard-deviation-15 scale the FAR uses. It does not replace an individually administered diagnostic evaluation, and it is not a dyslexia screener.

PAR, or Psychological Assessment Resources, publishes the FAR. The author is Steven G. Feifer, DEd, and the professional manual is credited to Feifer and Rebecca Gerhardstein Nader, PhD. It was published in 2015 and remains a first edition.

PAR lists prekindergarten through college. The 2019 test review in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment gives the range as ages 4 to 21.

About 35 minutes at prekindergarten, 60 minutes for kindergarten through Grade 1, and 75 minutes for Grade 2 and above. The separate Screening Form takes about 15 minutes.

Dysphonetic dyslexia, surface dyslexia, mixed dyslexia, and reading comprehension deficits. PAR sometimes labels the first of these "phonological dyslexia" in its product materials.

Yes. The FAR Screening Form is a separate product built from three FAR subtests, Phonemic Awareness, Rapid Automatic Naming and Semantic Concepts, and it yields one composite score indicating risk for dyslexia.

No. The FAR measures reading and reading-related processes. It uses the same 100-point mean and 15-point standard deviation as IQ tests, which makes the numbers look familiar, though a FAR index describes reading skill rather than general cognitive ability.

1. PAR. (n.d.). Feifer Assessment of Reading (FAR). Psychological Assessment Resources. parinc.com

2. PAR. (n.d.). Feifer Assessment of Reading (FAR) fact sheet [PDF]. Psychological Assessment Resources. parinc.com

3. PAR. (n.d.). Feifer Assessment of Reading Screening Form (FAR-SF). Psychological Assessment Resources. parinc.com

4. Johnson, J. M., Meisinger, E. B., & Robinson, M. F. (2019). Test review: A review of the Feifer Assessment of Reading (FAR). Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 37(8), 1037-1042. eric.ed.gov

5. Barrett-Clarke, A. P., & D'Alessandro, A. M. (n.d.). Literature review of the Feifer Assessment of Reading (FAR) [White paper]. PAR. parinc.com

6. Giella, A. K. (n.d.). Using skills, error, and behavior analyses with the Feifer Assessment of Reading (FAR) and the Feifer Assessment of Math (FAM) [White paper]. PAR. parinc.com

7. Stuebing, K. K., Barth, A. E., Trahan, L. H., Reddy, R. R., Miciak, J., & Fletcher, J. M. (2015). Are child cognitive characteristics strong predictors of responses to intervention? A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 85(3), 395-429. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Hero photo by Edmond Joe for the Library of Congress, released under CC0 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons; cropped to 16:9.