elaine garan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: It seems to me we are talking about
two related but separate issues
here: 1)DIBELS and 2) fluency, it's definition, its role in
comprehension and how it is acquired (does training in fluency result
in stronger comprehension, or does lots of reading and comprehension
result in fluency?
I want to reply to Lori and Tim's comments on fluency. Tim, thank you
for chiming in here. It's an honor to have your input. First to Lori's
comments on Ken Goodman's DIBELS book. Yes, he makes many excellent
points in the book including the confusion with Spanish speaking
children and children and teachers who have accents. I think perhaps
when his book was being written, Michael Pressley may not have
completed his research on DIBELS.
What Pressley and his team of independent researchers found is that 1)
The research on the DIBELS' website was done by people associated with
DIBELS and who therefore had a vested interest in the outcomes. 2) That
DIBELS mispredicts children's reading ability as measured by other,
broader assessments. Here are some quotes from Michael Pressley who was
a contributor to the National Reading Panel, a Reading Hall of fame
member and much of his work was directed at comprehension. I don't want
this to seem as if my issue is DIBELS per se. It's about what DIBELS
does in the long run and the way it confuses the fluency issue, because
it's been mandated in so many schools as a result of Reading First.
Most of our reading is not oral. I am often not fluent when I read to
myself (which is most of the time) because I often slow down and savor
the text or think about what I'm reading. Anyway, here is part of what
Pressley and his team found that I cite in my book. I'll respond to
Tim's observation about older readers and fluency in another email
because this is so long. Here are the quotes from the late Michael
Pressley resulting from his independent research on DIBELS:
DIBELS is often used as a predictor of reading success or failure.
However, even the DIBELS website shows that DIBELS only predicts 50% of
the variance in more comprehensive measures. Independent research is
even more dismal and shows that DIBELS only predicts 20% of the
variance.
What this means is that if you want to train kids to read fast with low
comprehension, then DIBELS is a great measure
it also means that
DIBELS often flags children as having problems when they are actually
good comprehenders. It also means that it neglects to identify children
who do have problems.
Michael Pressley: Contributor to the Report of the National Reading
Panel.
Based on available data, the fairest conclusion is that DIBELS
mis-predicts reading performance on other assessments much of the time,
and at best is a measure of who reads quickly without regard to whether
the reader comprehends what is read Consequently, they strongly
suggest that the whole issue of validating DIBELS should be reopened
before districts spend time and money on an assessment that is not a
valid predictor of reading proficiency (p. 2. National Reading Panel
contributor Michael Pressley, M. Hilden, K., and Shankland).
We cannot reconcile the difference in outcome reported here and in the
previous work [the research of the DIBELS associates]
. We think the
slippage between our results and those available on the DIBELS site,
all of which were produced by individuals either associated with DIBELS
or Reading First, makes clear that there needs to be additional study
of the DIBELS oral fluency measure by individuals not closely
associated with the measure (p. 23. National Reading Panel contributor
Michael Pressley, Katherine Hilden, and Rebecca Shankland).
Correlations between the Oral Reading Fluency scores and Oral
Retelling scores [the DIBELS measure for comprehension] were very low
(p. 17. National Reading Panel contributor Michael Pressley, M.
Hilden, K., and Shankland, R.).
Youll find these quotes in:
Pressley ,M., Hilden ,K., & Shankland, R., (2005). An evaluation of
end-of-grade 3 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (
DIBELS): Speed reading without comprehension, predicting little . East
Lansing: Michigan State University Literacy Achievement Research Center.
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