The relation between DIBELS, reading comprehension, and vocabulary in urban first-grade students.

Riedel, B. W. (2007). The relation between DIBELS, reading comprehension, and vocabulary in urban first-grade students. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(4), 546-567.


This meticulous research article presents evidence for using one subtest of the (in)famous DIBELS test, the "Oral Reading Fluency" test, and against using the rest of the subtests, including Letter Naming Fluency, Nonsense Word Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and Retelling Fluency (a one-minute timed retelling task). If only the results could have debunked the entire DIBELS battery! To me, this set of assessments is one of the worst things to come along in the field of reading. None of the tasks even remotely resembles authentic reading. Even the Oral Reading Fluency subtest, which involves reading connected text, is timed so that speech becomes key, and comprehension is not even really measured.

The author shows correlations with reading comprehension measures, but even those measures are suspect. I am dubious about Riedel's findings but it's food for thought, and a commentary by Jay Samuels and response from Riedel help illuminate the issues.