[Krashen] Kenneth Goodman on DIBELS: important paper (may be shared)

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DIBELS:The Perfect Literacy Test
Language Magazine
December 2005   V5:1 pp24-27  
Ken Goodman

 
If Katrina came close to being the perfect storm-in
the awful sense of 
the storm that had all the attributes to do the most
harm to the lives 
of those whose destructive power and irresistible
forces it touched, 
then there is a perfect literacy test sweeping through
American schools 
and doing the maximum amount of damage to the lives of
those it 
touches.  

American education has been overdosing on all kinds of
tests in recent 
years as politicians and groups with their own agendas
have put 
pressure on schools to show measurable results for the
funding they receive. And 
many tests have become “high stakes tests” in that
they are used as  
criteria for admissions, promotion, graduation and
even wages. 

But the perfect test is not like any of the
traditional tests in popular use. 
It is not norm referenced like the Iowa or Stanford
tests which are 
widely used to measure achievement. It is not like the
barrage of 
high-stakes state criterion referenced tests
promulgated to test 
reading and writing and judge whether pupils can pass
from grade to 
grade or receive a high school diploma. It is not the
National 
Assessment of Educational Progress which has been used
to paint dire 
pictures of whole states failing to produce proficient
readers and 
writers.  

No, the perfect Literacy test is the Dynamic
Indicators of 
Basic Literacy Skills developed by a federally funded
group at the 
University of Oregon. It is being widely mandated as
part of the No 
Child Left Behind plan each state must submit to the
federal 
bureaucracy that controls NCLB funding. Its acronym
DIBELS has, according to 
Education Week, “become a catchphrase in the
schoolhouse and the 
statehouse.” (Manzo, Education Week, 9/28/2005)  

What makes DIBELS the perfect literacy test is that it
takes total control of the academic  futures and 
school lives of the children it reaches from the first
day 
they enter kindergarten when they are barely five
years old. It keeps 
control of their literacy development and indeed their
whole school 
experience for four years from kindergarten through
third grade.. And 
the more poorly the children respond to DIBELS the
more they experience 
it. Norm referenced tests usually are not given until
third grade and 
then only once a year. Diagnostic tests are usually
used selectively 
with pupils to provide teachers with information on
what strengths and 
weaknesses learners may have. DIBELS, once it gains a
foothold, is 
administered a minimum of  three times a year at the
beginning, middle 
and end of each grade from kindergarten to third.

 Within a few days of entering school five year-olds
have their first 
opportunity to fail to achieve DIBELS arbitrary “bench
marks.” Each 
month DIBELS is also used to “monitor progress” and
those who are 
marked for “intensive instruction” are monitored
weekly. Such tests have 
sometimes been called test-teach-test models. In that
model a pre-test 
is given, then the content is taught and then a
post-test measures gain. 

DIBELS uses a test-test-test model because
increasingly frequent 
testing is the fate of those who fail to achieve the
bench marks of DIBELS. 
There are reports of children practicing for the
DIBELS while they wait 
in line to use the toilets.
 
Unlike Katrina whose path and approach could be
monitored permitting 
those who had the means to get out of her way to avoid
her dangers, 
DIBELS has arrived in most of the schools it takes
control of as an 
irresistible force with neither pupils or teachers
having any 
opportunity to get out of the way. That’s because the
federal 
ideologues  who have the power to review state NCLB
proposals have strongly 
“encouraged” the use of DIBELS and most states have
obliged, some even 
mandating its use in all of the state=s K-3
classrooms. Every K-3 
teacher in New Mexico gets a palm pilot programmed
with DIBELS. The 
scores the testers enter go directly to Santa Fe and
the computers at 
the University of Oregon.  

Where DIBELS has been mandated state-wide the only
escape from DIBELS 
is home-schooling which of course is not an option for
most working 
parents. Some parents have down-loaded the whole test
themselves and 
drilled their children at home so they will
“bench-mark” in school and 
avoid the intensive interventions of DIBELS.  

According to the  DIBELS manual (available on-line at 

http://dibels.uoregon.edu/ )  for the 2004-2005 school
year, 8293 
schools used the Dibels scoring service , across 2582
districts in 49 
states and Canada, totaling over 1.7 million students
(K-3). It’s 
likely that its reach has expanded considerably beyond
that for the current 
school year. <>

So what is DIBELS that it should have such awesome
powers? It is a 
package of sub-tests designed to be administered in 1
minute each. It’s 
basic premise is that it can reduce reading
development to a series of 
tasks, each measurable in one minute. Each test has
arbitrary 
Abenchmarks which get more difficult to achieve in
successive grades. 
The test authors claim that the sub-tests are
“stepping stones” to 
reading proficiency and each prepares the child for
the next test. That 
means that children who fail one test are failing in
reading 
development according to the authors. And in fact
children are being retained in 
kindergarten and first grade solely because they fail
one sub-test in 
DIBELS.  In fact, only a small number of states
require children to 
attend kindergarten. So children entering school
without kindergarten 
are already a year behind from the DIBELS perspective.


Testers who are most often not the children’s teachers
are given 
minimal training and admonished not to deviate in
anyway from the procedures or 
the wording of the tester=s manual. “You’ll be proud
of me” said one 
five year old to her teacher when she came back from
being Dibeled.. “I 
didn’t talk to those strangers”. Her scores were
perfect zeroes.

DIBELS provides no time for thoughtful responses. It
allows for only 
one speed- fast. Like a whirlwind DIBELS seizes young
children and 
drives them into each task. Each test is administered
with a stop watch 
in hand. Children are permitted three seconds for each
response and the 
test is stopped at one minute or when the child is
wrong on five items. 
All scores are quantitative and the tester makes no
judgements of the 
quality of the response, so in no sub-test is there
any information 
about how well the child is understanding- and indeed
in only one test 
is there any meaningful text to be read. 

Here are the names of the tests and what they actually
test  in the 
order that children would encounter them. 

 Letter Naming Fluency: The child is given a page with
lines of 
mixed capital and lower case letters in a font that is
not the most common 
one in early reading material. The score is the number
of letters correctly 
named in one minute. If the child says a sound instead
of a letter she 
is told “names not sounds”, but only once. Some five
year olds respond 
with the name of a child whose name starts with the
letter. No points 
for that.  

Initial Sound Fluency: The child is shown a page with
four pictures. 
The tester says a word for each picture and then asks
which picture starts 
with “buh”. The child must remember the names of the
pictures and then 
abstract out the first sound. The picture may look
like a bear but the 
tester called it a cub. That big yellow grasshopper
was called an 
insect. Is that picture a frosted donut or a bagel
with cheese on it? 
The score is the number of right initial sounds the
child can say in 1 
minute.  

Phonemic Segmentation Fluency: The tester has a sheet
with one syllable 
words. If the tester says “cat” the child must respond
kuh- ah- tuh in 
a few seconds. One point for each correct sound
produced in one minute. 
Mismatches between the dialect of the tester and the
child certainly 
effect the score.  

Nonsense Word Fluency: The child has a sheet with what
are supposed to 
be two or three letter “make-believe” words. The
tester tells the child 
to either say the whole word or each sound. In either
case the score is 
the number of sounds right in one minute. In this test
children already 
reading are handicapped because many of the nonsense
words are either 
possible spellings of real English words or actual
words in English or 
Spanish.  There are stories of teachers making
nonsense bulletin boards 
so the children can practice reading nonsense.

 Oral Reading Fluency.   Starting in first grade the
children are 
given a five paragraph essay on a topic written in
first person. The 
score is the number of words read correctly in one
minute. The children 
learn to skip any words they don’t know and say the
words they know as 
fast as they can. The tester says any word the child
stops at after a 
few seconds. Some children use that as a signal that
they should wait 
for the tester to say the word before proceeding. And
a minute goes by 
very rqapidly.
 

Oral Retelling Fluency. Teachers complained that 
counting correct 
words didn’t show what the children understood. So the
DIBELS folks added an 
oral retelling. The score is the number of words the
kids produce in 
one minute that are more or less on topic. No
attention is paid to the 
quality of the retelling. Honest.

Word Use Fluency ;   Starting in kindergarten, the
tester says a word 
and tells the child to “Use the word”. The score is
the number of words 
the child uses in using the words in one minute. It’s
hard to see what 
this would have to do with reading since no reading or
print is involved.

Notice that each test name includes the word fluency.
How can one be a 
fluent word namer or sound sayer? Apparently fluency
to the Dibelers 
means speed and accuracy.

There are many things wrong with DIBELS.

It turns reading into a set of abstract
decontextualized tasks that can 
be measured in one minute. It makes little children
race with a stop watch.

It values speed over thoughtful responses.

It takes over the curriculum leaving no time for
science, social 
studies, writing, not to mention art music and play.

It ignores and even penalizes children for the
knowledge and reading 
ability they  may have already achieved..

Reading is ultimately the ability to make sense of
print and no part of 
DIBELS tests that in any way. In DIBELS the whole is
clearly the sum of 
the parts and comprehension will somehow emerge from
the fragments 
being tested.  

On top of that the sub-tests are poorly executed- the
authors do 
badly what they say they are doing. Furthermore the
testers must judge 
accuracy, mark a score sheet and watch a stop watch
all at the same 
time. And, to be fair, testers must listen carefully
to children who at 
this age often lack front teeth, have soft voices, and
speak a range of 
dialects as well languages other than English.
Consistency in scoring 
is highly unlikely among so many testers and each
tester is likely to be 
inconsistent.  

And lets add that DIBELS encourages cheating. There is
a thin line 
between practicing the “skills” that are tested and
being drilled on 
the  actual test items, all of which are on-line to be
downloaded.. With so 
much at stake why wouldn’t there be cheating?

 In summary DIBELS, The Perfect Literacy Test, is a
mixed bag of 
silly  little tests. If it weren’t causing so much
grief to children and 
teachers it would be laughable. It’s hard to believe
that it could have 
passed the review of professional committees state
laws require for 
adoption of texts and tests . And in fact it has not
passed such 
reviews. There is strong evidence of coercion from
those with the power 
to approve funding of state NCLB proposals and blatant
conflicts of 
interest for those who profit from the test and also 
have the  power 
to force its use..  A congressional investigation is
now underway into 
these conflicts of interest .  

In training sessions for DIBELS,  teachers are not
permitted to raise 
questions and are made to feel that there is a
scientific base to the 
test they lack the competence to understand. It is,
after all, The 
Perfect Literacy Test. 

Ken Goodman, Professor Emeritus
Language, Reading and Culture,
University of Arizona  Kgoodman at u.arizona.edu



 

Short Bio:

Ken Goodman is a researcher and teacher educator in
language and 
literacy. He is past-president of the International
Reading Association 
and the National Conference of Research in Language
and Literacy. His 
reading miscue research and model of the reading
process have won a 
number of national awards. His books include On
Reading, Phonics Phacts 
( both Heineman) In Defense of Good Teachers
(Stenhouse) and Saving Our 
Schools (RDR Books)