District Administration - August 2007 - (Page 38)

STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENT DIBELS Draws Doers & Doubters Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills monitor K6 reading progress but raise questions. BY ALAN DESSOFF WHEN KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS in Cincinnati-area schools were tested on their basic reading skills last fall, examiners found that 13.5 percent of the children needed intensive instructional support in phoneme segmentation fluency—dividing the different sounds, or phonemes, of a word. When tested at the end of kindergarten, only 2.7 percent of the children still needed that help. Administrators credit the improvement to the tool they used to assess the children—Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), a set of tests that focus on the various skills necessary for learning to read. Ohio authorities say it helped them identify students who needed specialized instruction and that after receiving that instruction, more students scored better on the later DIBELS test. “DIBELS has been fantastic. It has been the most powerful tool for changing student outcomes that I have ever encoun38 August 2007 tered,” says Stephanie Stollar, an educational consultant with the Southwest Ohio Special Education Regional Resource Center. One of 16 regional centers in the state, it serves school districts in Cincinnati and four surrounding counties. But not all educators share Stollar’s enthusiasm. DIBELS is “the worst thing to happen to the teaching of reading since the development of flash cards,” asserts P. David Pearson, dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley. Pearson claims that it shapes instruction in bad ways for students and teachers alike. It’s bad for students because they are “held accountable to the indicators” rather than to whether or not they really learn to read, he says. It’s bad for teachers, he continues, because it requires them to teach and judge students based on criteria that are “not consistent with our best knowledge about the nature of reading development,” including whether students understand what they read. Some teachers and parents agree. “I get nothing out of it. It tells me how fast they can read and nothing else. It is a waste of my time,” declares Melissa Pares, who teaches fifth grade at Bullard Talent School in the Fresno (Calif.) Unified School District. “I question how reliable and valid the test scores are,” adds Sandra Blackburn, a veteran second grade teacher at Longstreet Elementary School in the Volusia County Schools in DeLand, Fla. Lisa Laser is homeschooling her second grade son, Ellis, after she and her husband removed him from Joseph Elementary School in Oregon because of “the horror of DIBELS” he experienced in first grade. His teacher suggested he be held back after first grade. “The test itself is harmful, and the curriculum essentially was to teach to the test,” Laser says. District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - August 2007

Contents
Editor’s Letter
Letters
News Update
Technology Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
Research Corner
Computer Literature
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Bus Money
DIBELS Draws Doers & Doubters
Report from EduComm 2007
Ins and Outs of Outsourcing
Curriculum Clearance
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
New Products
Problem Solution
Online Edge
Speaking Out
Professional Opinion
Calendar of Events
Understanding the Times

District Administration - August 2007

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