ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on assessment, the role of assessment in a comprehensive, integrated educational system. The utility and validity of the assessment system are grounded in two fundamental features: identifying the foundational skills of beginning reading, and evaluating growth of foundational skills efficiently and reliably. The chapter shows that fluency as represented by accuracy and rate pervades all levels of processing involved in reading and that fluency on early foundation skills can be used to predict proficiency on subsequent skills in reading. It examines the decision-making utility of the DffiELS benchmark goals in the context of a district engaged in a school wide educational reform effort targeting phonological awareness and alphabetic principle skills. The chapter explores the lower utility of DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency resulted from students with a pattern of timely attainment of phonological awareness skills but insufficient alphabetic principle skills in time to change first-grade reading outcomes.
