Maryland State Department of Education
Office of Reading First
Prepared by: Karen Shavin, Program Specialist

Overview

The purpose of this document is to establish a system for documenting commonly occurring questions and answers to those questions. As questions arise concerning Maryland's Reading First Assessment Plan, they will be posted on this website.

What types of assessments are required by the Reading First initiative?

There are four types of assessments Reading First schools must use to guide instruction and program evaluation. These are:

Screening - Screening assessments determine which children may be at risk for reading difficulty and need additional intervention

Progress Monitoring - Progress monitoring assessments determine if students are making adequate progress or need more intervention to achieve grade level reading outcomes.

Diagnostic - Diagnostic assessments help teachers plan instruction by providing in-depth information about students' skills and instructional needs

Outcome - Outcome assessments provide a bottom-line evaluation of the effectiveness of the reading program.

How is this different from what schools are currently doing?

As a part of the Maryland Model for School Readiness (MMSR), kindergarten teachers must evaluate students during the first few weeks of the kindergarten year using selected WSS indicators and report their ratings by the end of November of each year to the state. (http://www.mdk12.org/instruction/ensure/mmsr/mmsrfa1.html). The DIBELS will be used as an additional tool that can inform WSS indicators and assess risk factors for reading difficulties.

Another change is the use of ongoing monitoring to determine if the child is making sufficient progress in order to be able to read on grade level by the end of third grade. Currently schools use criterion referenced assessments embedded in the curriculum to determine progress. These assessments inform instruction but do not indicate if the child is making sufficient progress to be successful readers. The screening and progress monitoring assessments required in Reading First schools are indicators that predict if a child may be at risk for reading difficulties, allowing teachers to intervene before the child falls behind.

Lastly, high stakes tests are administered in the spring of third grade. Reading First schools will use the Reading First edition of the Stanford Achievement Test 10 (SAT-10) in the spring of first and second grades to monitor progress of children towards the third grade Maryland School Assessment, which includes portions of the SAT-10.

What are the requirements for Reading First Schools?

Maryland's Reading First Proposal requires that all schools receiving funding under the grant administer a common set of screening, progress monitoring, diagnostic, and outcome assessments. The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) have been selected for screening, progress monitoring, and partial outcome assessment. The SAT-10 will provide additional outcome information. These tests are brief, individually administered tests of critical early reading skills. Screening and progress monitoring tests will be administered three times a year, at a minimum. More frequent monitoring may be required for children who receive more intensive reading instruction because they are experiencing difficulties in learning to read. Outcome assessments are administered once a year.

The screening and progress monitoring tests that will be required in all Reading First schools are:

Kindergarten
    Letter Naming Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (Jan.., May)
    Nonsense Word Fluency (Jan.., May)
    Initial Sound Fluency (Sept., Jan.)
    Word Use Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)

First Grade
    Letter Naming Fluency (Sept.)
    Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (Sept., Jan.)
    Nonsense Word Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Oral Reading Fluency (Jan., May)
    Retell Fluency (Jan., May)
    Word Use Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Stanford 10 Reading First Edition (April)

Second Grade
    Nonsense Word Fluency (Sept.)
    Oral Reading Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Retell Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Word Use Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Stanford 10 Reading First Edition (April)

Third Grade
    Oral Reading Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Retell Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Word Use Fluency (Sept., Jan., May)
    Stanford 10 Reading First Edition (April)

What are the DIBELS measures?

The DIBELS were developed at the Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth and Development at the University of Oregon. They are designed to measure the important skills good readers use in reading. These skills include phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Each measure takes between one and three minutes to administer and there are multiple forms available for repeated assessment. The measures have extensive research to document how they accurately predict performance on these important outcomes. The technical reports are available from the University of Oregon website at http://www.uoregon.edu/techreports/index.php.

Descriptions of the measures:

Letter Naming Fluency - this test assesses how fluently a child can name the letters on a page. The child has one minute to name as many letters as he/she can.

Initial Sounds Fluency - assesses a child's skill to identify and produce the initial sound of a given word. This is a measure of early phonemic awareness.

Phoneme Segmentation Fluency - assesses a child's ability to produce the individual sounds within a given three- or four-letter word. This is a more advanced measure of phonemic awareness.

Nonsense Word Fluency - measures a child's knowledge and skill in applying the alphabetic principle. The child can either give the sounds represented by the letters or blend the sounds together and pronounce the nonsense word as a whole. This is a measure of phonics.

Oral Reading Fluency - assesses a child's ability to read grade level text fluently and accurately. The child has one minute to read as many words in the passage as he can.

Retell Fluency - assesses comprehension by asking the child to tell as much as they can in one minute about the story they just read.

Word Use Fluency - assesses vocabulary knowledge by asking the child to use a word in a sentence. The child responds to as many requests as possible in one minute.

How do diagnostic tests fit into the overall Reading First assessment plan?

Diagnostic assessments provide more in-depth information on a student's skills and instructional needs to help plan instruction. They should be given whenever the additional information is needed to help plan more effective instruction for a child.

Reading First schools are required to administer the following diagnostic assessments when DIBELS monitoring indicates a child is not making progress:

Phonemic Awareness
Phonological Awareness Test (K-1)

Phonics
Phonological Awareness Test (K-1)

Fluency
Gray Oral Reading Test IV (1-3)

Vocabulary
Test of Word Knowledge (K-3)

Comprehension
Gray Oral Reading Test IV (1-3)

Where do I find the resources to implement this plan?

The DIBELS administration and scoring guide is available to download at http://reading.uoregon.edu/assessment/admin_and_scoring6.pdf. The DIBELS materials are available for download at http://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures/materials.php. You will need to create a password and login to use this site. There is no charge for the materials. A self tutorial on how to administer the DIBELS measures is available online at http://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures.php. Information on developing a school wide plan to assess each child is available at http://reading.uoregon.edu/assessment/data_collection2.pdf.

The materials are also available for purchase from Sopris West.
Their website is http://www.dibelsassessment.com.

Update: 11.15.07