Research in English: Measuring Oral Fluency and Comprehension in Grades 2 - 6.

10-second review: I chose to define the problem of measuring fluency and comprehension.

Title: “Oral Reading Fluency Assessment: Issues of Construct, Criterion and Consequential Validity.” SW Valencia, et al. Reading Research Quarterly (July/ August/ September 2010), 270 -291.

Quote: “In an effort to address assessment requirements, many schools, districts and states have turned to a simple measure to assess reading performance. With a long history of research and use in special education, this measure involves having students read aloud from brief passages drawn from materials used in the classroom provided in commercial testing kits, or developed independently…. The student reads for 1 minute as the teacher records errors, which produces a score reported as words correct per minute (wcpm).”

Quote: “Over time, results of this approach to measuring oral reading have been used for a variety of purposes, including screening to identify students academically at risk, placement in remedial and special education programs, monitoring students progress, improving instructional programs, and predicting performance on high-stakes assessments….”

Quote: “Most recently, measures using wcpm have also been associated with the assessment of oral reading fluency, one of the core strands identified in the NRP report.”

[And what is this simple, one-minute test supposed to measure? RayS.]

Quote: “Although definitions of oral reading fluency vary, it generally has been defined as the ability to read text quickly, accurately, with proper phrasing and expression, thereby reflecting the ability to simultaneously decode and comprehend.”

Comment: All that in one minute. Well, why wouldn’t people like such a simple one-minute test? The people who wrote this article challenge its validity. Think about the complex uses this test of oral reading and fluency has been used for. All that in one minute. A simple solution for a complex problem.

In my opinion, this approach to measuring fluency measures only words called correctly, minus words called incorrectly and leaves an awful lot of power in the judgments of the tester. RayS.