Why use DIBELS?

Teaching with the odds in your favor.

While the relation between the PSF and ORF measures is not perfect, it is accurate at predicting performance at the ends of the continuum. For example, for the students finishing Kindergarten established on phonological awareness, 84 percent of them were established readers by the end of first grade. This means that the odds are in the child's favor of being a reader in first grade if they have established PA in kindergarten. Conversely, the odds are stacked against students finishing kindergarten with a score of 10 or less on PSF. Only 16 percent of those students were established readers at the end of first grade. The table below has the scores of one classroom of first graders from the scatterplot example. One column has the end-of-Kindergarten PSF performance and the right hand column has that same student's end-of-first-grade ORF performance. You can use these scores to put a name to the dots in the grade-level scatterplot. In this classroom, of the 5 children finishing kindergarten with a score of less than 10 on PSF, only 1 (Matt P.) was an established reader at the end of first grade. For the 7 students finishing kindergarten with established PA, six were established readers at the end of first grade.

Dr. Roland Good discusses the importance on phonemic awareness. (Click button to play video.)

While not perfectly predictive, first grade teachers can use students' kindergarten performance to identify students who will most likely require more intensive instruction at the beginning of first grade to prevent the likelihood of being a nonreader at the end of first grade. This table also demonstrates how much kindergarten instruction impacts later reading performance.

Dr. Roland Good discusses the importance of prevention. (Click button to play video.)