Assessment Because reading occurs in the black box of the brain, any assessment of reading will be incomplete. The best approach, therefore, is to use a collection of assessments, each designed to illuminate different aspects of a reader’s progress. We urge districts to take ownership of this process to ensure that your locally specific assessments, and those recommended in this program, complement rather than duplicate one another. With that in mind, we recommend the following assessments: A High-Stakes, Once-a-Year Reading Test In analyzing these data, note especially your indications of growth. If, for example, a class of kids has 27% of students “in the red” in third grade, does that number go up or down in 4th grade? If a district has 28% of kids exceeding standards in third grade does that percentage hold into middle school? Be certain also to pay attention to subgroups within your data. If 68% of students are reading at grade level, does that same percentage hold true for students who are multilingual learners or students with disabilities? An Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) Assessment Oral Reading Fluency scores can be obtained from screeners—such as Acadience ® , DIBELS ® , MAP ® , and others. If you do not already use a screener, you can create this assessment by calculating Words Correct Per Minute (WCPM) using graded passages, such as those from the Qualitative Reading Inventory™ (QRI™). If you are using a published tool, like one of the common screeners, it will probably include a scale for translating the WCPM into a percentile score that indicates a reader’s general well-being relative to the time of year. If, however, you develop your own tool or use a screener that does not provide such a scale, you could refer to the Hasbrouck-Tindal scale for the appropriate time of year. Using a scale like this will give you a percentile score that is research-based, valid and reliable as an indicator of that reader’s general well-being. Although this assessment is named the “Oral Reading Fluency assessment,” Hasbrouck emphasizes that the name is actually incorrect, because the assessment reveals automaticity, not fluency. If a student is reading at a level that is below bench- mark, instead of assuming that student needs more support with fluency, it is important for you to conduct further diagnostic assessments. You may discover that, rather than help with fluency, the student may need additional support with phonics, with English vocabulary or with comprehension. If needed, teachers can use graded passages from earlier years to determine the grade level at which the student’s WCPM is at least at the 50%. We recommend tracking this indicator at least three times a year, especially for students below grade level. Listening Comprehension/Constructed Response The previous assessment will reveal a student’s abilities to quickly decode words. You will, however, also need to understand ways in which students can do the higher-level comprehension work that is expected of them. Each unit therefore comes with a pre- and post-assessment of skills that are especially important for this purpose. You may read the passages aloud, or ask students who can do so to read the passages themselves and only read the passages aloud to students who otherwise could not access them. (That can be a district decision.) Either way, you’ll want to score student work using the graded progression of exemplars and to think about what the next steps are for any given student. If a third grader’s response is at the first grade level, for instance, your goal should be to help that student do second grade level work immediately, and only then to progress up the ladder towards grade level work. The post-assessment can help you, as the teacher, see if your teaching has had a lasting effect. If not, consider this assess- ment as feedback on not only your students’ growth, but also on your teaching. What other ways might you decide to reach this youngster and make a lasting difference?
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