A Comparison of an Oral Reading Fluency Measure and a Reading Comprehension Measure to Identify Students at Risk for Failure on a State Assessment of Reading

Significant incentives exist for educators to efficiently identify, students at risk of failing statewide assessments. This study strives to add to the body of research on curriculum-based assessments (CBAs) used, in part, for this purpose. This study compares the ability of two commonly used CBAs to identify students at risk for failure on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). To this end, results from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Oral Reading Fluency (DORF) were compared with the results from the Measures of Academic Progress Reading Comprehension Test (MAP-R). The study analyzed the scores of 93 fourth grade students from a suburban/rural elementary school, all of whom were administered DORF and MAP-R in the fall and spring of the 2016–2017 school year and took the PSSA in 2017. Results from each assessment were examined in terms of several indices (Improvement, Stability, Specificity, and Sensitivity) and were compared, using chi-squared analyses. Overall, the DORF and MAP-R performed comparably, with few statistically significant differences between them