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Why use DIBELS?Teaching with the odds in your favor.Because the DIBELS measures have been used so extensively in schools and with real children, we have data indicating the relation between the measures. As stepping stones to literacy development, it means that performance on one DIBELS measure is predictive of performance on the next appropriate DIBELS measure. To demonstrate the predictive nature of the measures, let's look at two different scatterplots demonstrating: 1) the relation of kindergarten phonological awareness and 2) first grade alphabetic principle on end-of-first-grade reading proficiency.
The Role of Phonological Awareness in Kindergarten on End-of-First-Grade Reading ProficiencyExample scatterplot of a school using the DIBELS data system to make educational decisions. The role of PA in later reading proficiency.
Click on a section of this scatterplot to see a description of the students in that section.
This scatterplot displays all first grade students in a school using their Kindergarten May phonological awareness performance (measured by PSF) with their end-of-first-grade fluency with connected text performance (measured by ORF). Each dot represents an individual student. If you track down from a dot, you will get that student's end of Kindergarten performance on the PSF measure (horizontal axis). If you track over to the vertical axis, using the same student, you will get that child's end of first grade ORF score. The green lines within the plot depict the benchmark goal levels for each measure. In this example, the green vertical line is at 35 because that is the goal level for all children to be at or above by the end of kindergarten. Any child to the right of the green vertical line met the end of kindergarten goal on phonological awareness. The green horizontal line is at 40 because that is the goal level for all children to be at or above on the ORF measure by the end of first grade. Any child above the green horizontal line has met the end-of-year ORF goal. The red line depicts the scores that are predictive of later reading difficulty. Children to the left of the red vertical line had a score of less than 10 on the PSF measure and are at serious risk for reading difficulties without a change in instructional program. Students below the red horizontal line had a score of less than 10 on ORF at the end of first grade and are considered to be non-readers.
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