The Controversy Surrounding the DIBELS Literacy Test
DIBELS is a literacy test that is an acronym for the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Literacy Skills. The test was developed by a federally funded group at the University of Oregon. It is being widely mandated as part of the No Child Left Behind plan each state must submit to the federal bureaucracy that controls NCLB funding. According to Education Week, DIBELS has “become a catchphrase in the schoolhouse and the statehouse.” (Manzo, Education Week, 9/28/2005)
DIBELS assesses three of the five components of literacy development. Through different instruments, DIBELS assesses phonological awareness, the alphabetic principle and fluency.
If a school is receiving a Reading First grant, it is generally expected that all K – 3 children enrolled in a Reading First school participate in the DIBELS and other Reading First required assessments.
Listed here are the names of the individual DIBELS literacy tests.
Letter Naming Fluency: The child is given a page with lines of mixed capital and lower case letters in a font that is not the most common one in early reading material. The score is the number of letters correctly named in one minute. If the child says a sound instead of a letter she is told “names not sounds”, but only once.
Initial Sound Fluency: The child is shown a page with four pictures. The tester says a word for each picture and then asks which picture starts with “buh”. The child must remember the names of the pictures and then abstract out the first sound. The picture may look like a bear but the tester called it a cub. That big yellow grasshopper was called an insect. The score is the number of right initial sounds the child can say in 1 minute.
Phonemic Segmentation Fluency: The tester has a sheet of one-syllable words. If the tester says “cat” the child must respond kuh- ah- tuh in a few seconds. One point for each correct sound produced in one minute.
Nonsense Word Fluency: The child is given a sheet of two or three letter “make-believe” words. The tester tells the child to either say the whole word or each sound. In either case, the score is the number of sounds right in one minute.
Oral Reading Fluency: Starting in first grade the children are given a five-paragraph essay on a topic written in first person. The score is the number of words read correctly in one minute. The children learn to skip any words they don’t know and say the words they know as fast as they can. The tester says any word the child stops at, after a few seconds.
Oral Re-telling Fluency: Teachers complained that counting correct words didn’t show what the children understood. So the DIBELS folks added an oral retelling. The score is the number of words the kids produce in one minute that are more or less on topic. No attention is paid to the quality of the retelling. Honest.
Word Use Fluency: Starting in kindergarten, the tester says a word and tells the child to “use the word”. The score is the number of words the child uses in one minute. Such tests have sometimes been called test-teach-test models. In that model a pre-test is given, then the content is taught and then a post-test measures gain. DIBELS uses a test-test-test model because increasingly frequent testing is the outcome for of those who fail to achieve the benchmarks of DIBELS.
Opponents of DIBELS
- DIBELS is a package of sub-tests designed to be administered in 1 minute each. Its basic premise is that it can reduce reading development to a series of tasks, each measurable in one improbable minute.
- Each test has arbitrary “benchmarks” which get more difficult to achieve in successive grades. The test authors claim that the sub-tests are “stepping stones” to reading proficiency and each prepares the child for the next test. That means that children who fail one test are failing in reading development according to the authors.
- Children are being retained in kindergarten and first grade solely because they fail one sub-test in DIBELS.
- Additionally, only a small number of states require children to attend kindergarten. So children entering school without kindergarten are already a year behind from the DIBELS perspective.
- DIBELS provides no time for thoughtful responses. It allows for only one speed: fast. Each test is administered with a stopwatch in hand. Children are permitted three seconds for each response and the test is stopped at one minute or when the child is wrong on five items.
Proponents of DIBELS
- DIBELS testing is intended to measure student progress in key aspects of early literacy acquisition and to assist with identification of at-risk students.
- The goals/benchmarks were developed following a large group of students in a longitudinal manner to see where students who were “readers” in later grades were performing on these critical early literacy skills when they were in Kindergarten and First grade so that predictions could be made about which students progress adequately or which students may need additional instructional support.
- Within a few days of entering school, five-year-olds have their first opportunity to work toward DIBELS benchmarks. Each month DIBELS is also used to “monitor progress” and those who are marked for “intensive instruction” are monitored weekly.
The vision is one of changing the future, of building futures for children. There are some children who will learn to read in spite of anything we do, there are other children who will learn to read because of what we do—and for those children, we can change the future.—Roland H. Good, III, PhD
What do you think about DIBELS, NCLB, and the struggle of reluctant readers in the classroom?
Sources: Ken Goodman, Good & Kaminski, 2002.
