For many years, education researchers have grouped students into categories based on their skills and abilities. This research can help teachers and curriculum developers to understand the transition through the overlapping stages of reading acquisition, and can provide opportunities for appropriate instruction and targeted interventions for students who are struggling with certain aspects of reading acquisition. Using Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data on a nationally representative sample of second grade students in Indonesia, we have developed a new approach for categorizing students into learning profiles, which are directly tied to their particular instructional needs. We divided students into five learning profiles based on their reading ability (Grade 3 Ready, Fluent, Instructional, Beginner, and Nonreader) and then examined the relationship among these profiles and their reading skills on a variety of EGRA subtasks in order to determine the instructional need required to promote students from one profile to the next. Although the exact cuts points will differ by orthography, the framework laid out in this paper is tied directly to two EGRA subtasks in order for it to be easily adjusted for use regardless of the language or country. Accordingly, this approach significantly increases the value of EGRA results in terms of their practical implications and can be used to provide clear guidance to researchers, ministry officials, aid organizations and policy makers aiming to address educational shortcomings and improve student performance across countries.
