1) The universal screening helps identify those at risk for reading disabilities and it involves the whole school. It is typically done three times throughout the whole school year. It assesses skills such as fluency in oral reading, phoneme segmentation and letter reading. The results are organized for discussion by school professionals, the scores are calculated for the students risk level determined by predetermined norms.
2) An advantage is children who need more help are placed into a category that is designed to give them the right amount of help depending on their tier placement. Another advantage children who are considered struggling and placed into the bottom tier are getting plans designed to help them instead of being ignored.