title: Accuracy of the DIBELS oral reading fluency measure for predicting third grade reading comprehension outcomes.
abstract: We evaluated the validity of DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) ORF (Oral Reading Fluency) for predicting performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT-SSS) and Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-10) reading comprehension measures. The usefulness of previously established ORF risk-level cutoffs [Good, R.H., Simmons, D.C., and Kame'enui, E.J. (2001). The importance and decision-making utility of a continuum of fluency-based indicators of foundational reading skills for third-grade high-stakes outcomes. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5, 257-288.] for third grade students were evaluated on calibration (n(S1)=16,539) and cross-validation (n(S2)=16,908) samples representative of Florida's Reading First population. The strongest correlations were the third (February/March) administration of ORF with both FCAT-SSS and SAT-10 (r(S)=.70-.71), when the three tests were administered concurrently. Recalibrated ORF risk-level cut scores derived from ROC (receiver-operating characteristic) curve analyses produced more accurate identification of true positives than previously established benchmarks. The recalibrated risk-level cut scores predict performance on the FCAT-SSS equally well for students from different socio-economic, language, and race/ethnicity categories.
authors.affiliation: Florida State University and The Florida Center for Reading Research, 227 N. Bronough St., Suite 7250, Tallahassee, FL 32301, USA. aroehrig@fcrr.org
authors.forename: Alysia D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Roehrig
authors.forename: Yaacov
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Petscher
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Nettles
authors.forename: Roxanne F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Hudson
authors.forename: Joseph K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Torgesen
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D004521:Educational Measurement; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011932:Reading