High Stakes Testing: Thy Name is DIBELS
Parents, please feel free to use this letter written by Morna McDermott McNulty, administrator for United Opt Out National. Morna is opting her children out of DIBELS. Read to find out why. This is also our action for the week of August 26, 2012 – share this letter far and wide. Email it to all of your friends with young children. Send it to your child’s teacher. We must continue to educate and encourage others to take actions which will place the focus where it belongs – on high quality teaching and learning for all children.
Dear ______,
(Child’s name) will not be participating in the DIBELS assessments this year. The teachers at ______ are experienced, knowledgeable and caring educators. It is my firm belief that they can identify more effective and meaningful ways to assess my children’s reading abilities and needs. While I understand that Baltimore County states that it requires DIBELS to be completed by every child, I am aware that it is my Constitutional right to request their nonparticipation in practices which I believe to be harmful. My concerns over the harmful nature of DIBELS is grounded in decades of research conducted by the most respected and nationally recognized scholars in the field of literacy.
Here is what they have to say about DIBELS:
The “skills” children need to pass DIBELS and similar tests are the result of reading. The use of DIBELS and its cousins encourages test preparation in the form of skills training, which is a confusion of cause and effect.
Practicing reading nonsense words quickly, in preparation for the DIBELS test, will not contribute very much to helping children learn to read. In other words, practicing reading nonsense words quickly, in preparation for the DIBELS test, will not contribute very much to helping children learn to read. But the experience of reading comprehensible and interesting texts will result in the ability to read, as well as develop the capacity to read nonsense words quickly. Good readers can easily read the boxed list of nonsense words presented with the story, whether they have had extensive skills training or not.
The correlation between DIBELS scores and subsequent reading-test performance is spurious. Both are the result of the experience of real reading.
Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
Los Angeles, Calif.
Professor Emeritus
Los Angeles, Calif.
—
The whole test can be downloaded by anybody, even a computer-smart kid. So abuses are possible, and, as I hear from teachers, quite common. The stakes are high for all concerned to raise DIBELS scores. And that’s not
