Standardized Literacy Assessment
Background
Standardized literacy assessments are evidence-based, individually administered measures
of early literacy development. Today, literacy assessments such as the Dynamic Indicators
of Basic Early Literacy Skills©, or DIBELS©, are the product of over 25 years of proven
scientific research. Their measures address the essential early literacy domains discussed
in both the National Reading Panel (2000) and National Research Council (1998) reports,
assessing student development of phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding, and
automaticity and fluency with the code. Each measure has been thoroughly researched and
demonstrated to be reliable and valid indicators of early literacy development and
predictive of later reading proficiency, aiding in the early identification of students
who are not progressing as expected.nd valid indicators of early literacy development and
predictive of later reading proficiency, aiding in the early identification of students
who are not progressing as expected.
Problem
To date, few choices have existed for teachers and schools to effectively and efficiently
administer, collect, and manage assessment data. Yet, data collection and data management
are critical success factors for providing ongoing student performance assessment and for
reporting progress by individual student, or by class, school, or district. Most commonly,
for those schools who reliably deliver literacy assessments, the process for data
collection is burdensome. In most cases, teachers administer individual assessments,
scoring and notating results by hand, on a pre-printed score sheet. In the best of cases,
these score sheets are then collected and forwarded to administrative staff who re-key
data into a centralized software database for ongoing management and reporting. In this
scenario, the administrative function is a constraining factor and is viewed as a burden
on already-limited school resources. In fact, in a vast majority of cases, the
administrative function never occurs, with individual score sheets being stored locally as
hardcopy. |
