Table 1.

Benchmarks for Letter-Naming Abilities From State, Federal, and Professional Standards

Document	Benchmark
State preschool standardsa
State of Alaska Early Learning Guidelines	Correctly identifies 10 or more letters of the alphabet Identifies a letter for a given letter name, for most letters
Alabama Performance Standards for 4-year-olds	Identifies at least 10 letters of the alphabet, especially those in child’s own name
Arizona Early Childhood Standards	Recognizes and names at least 10 letters of the alphabet
California Desired Results Outcomes; Preschool Learning Foundations	Progresses from recognizing some letters to knowing at least 10 letters by sight and name to knowing most letters Matches more than half of uppercase letter names and more than half of lowercase letter names to their printed form
Early Learning Standards for Children Entering Kindergarten in the District of Columbia	Identifies 10 or more letters
Indiana Academic Standards for Young Children from Birth to Age 5	Names 13 uppercase letters Points to and names six letters
South Dakota Early Learning Guidelines	Identifies at least 10 letters of the alphabet, especially those in child’s own name
Revised Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines	Names at least 20 uppercase and at least 20 lowercase letters
Virginia’s Foundation Blocks for Early Learning: Comprehensive Standards for Four-Year-Olds	Correctly identifies 10 to 18 alphabet (uppercase) letters by name in random order
Early Learning and Development Benchmarks: Washington State	Identifies a letter for a given letter name, for most letters Recognizes several uppercase and lowercase letters
Wyoming Department of Education Early Childhood Readiness Standards	Associates at least 10 letters with their shapes or sounds
Other standards
Head Start Outcomes Framework	Identifies at least 10 letters of the alphabet, especially those in their own name
Early Reading First Program Performance Reports	Identifies the average number of letters for preschool-age children in Early Reading First programs as measured by the Upper Case Alphabet Knowledge subtask on the PALS-PreK assessment (performance targets of 16 to 19 letters from 2005 to 2008)
National Association for the Education of Young Children: Learning to Read and Write	Identifies some letters
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts	Recognizes and names all uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet (kindergarten)

Note. All standards documents were current as of March 2010. References for standards documents are available from the first author on request. PALS Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschool (Invernizzi, Sullivan, et al., 2004).

^aStandards for an additional 34 states include reference to being able to recognize or identify some or several letters.