IRA and other reputable educational organizations strongly discourage the use of reading levels as ways to report on achievement...for this reason among others. I think the main reason we use them is because they seem to be the easiest for teachers and parents to understand, but that is not necessarily the case. The simple explanation I give is this. When a fifth grader scores at the 12th grade level on something like star, it does not mean he is reading at a 12th grade level, it means if a 12th grader took this test, he would get a score close to this. (I think I am pretty close on this explanation, but would welcome further clarification. It is always an issue.)
Funny this has come up today. I was asked by a first grade teacher to look at a dibels fluency prog. monitoring chart of a middle of the road reader...long story short... I ended up looking at the dibels website for information on how they determine reading levels of passages. (They rely mostly on the Spache readability formula.) I read the research on this on the website,and the dibels people used about 7 - 8 different formulas, and the first grade passages ranged from early first to fourth.?You can pretty much choose a readability level to fit your needs, it seems!! So, I agree...no accurate reading level! Cathy K-5 DE -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 4:08 pm Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] STAR I have a question that has been bothering me. How many on this list believe there is any such thing as an "accurate" reading level. It is always iffy in my mind. Depends so much on the schema people bring to a reading and the interest and engagement. And in my experience kids read at different levels depending ont hings like genre. So to act as if there is anything like "accurate" is not possible. So administrators who want "levels" every 6 weels have no understanding of what reading really is - right? Just wondering if others believe as I do. In mymind it is not an objective number EVER (except as a particular score on a particular occasion with a particular text and a particular reader)and certainly thinking there would be meaningful change in 6 weeks on such a score is also crazy. Now I know the number crunchers will believe they are getting numbers worth crunching but.....???? It is not that we can't get a broad general level - a place to start. But it would have to be considered along with information on the reader's experience with different kinds of texts, interests and expertise and so on. But one "level" alone also can't stand for reading across topics and genres anyway. Sally > I agree with you regarding STAR. Using this will only provide a > level, and not a very accurate one at that. > Jill Waldrep Wadkins > Academic Coach > Sanders Intermediate School > 770.819.2568 ext. 223 > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
