Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills

Why use DIBELS? (continued)

The Role of the First Grade Alphabetic Principle on End of First Grade Reading Proficiency

Click on a section of the scatterplot to see a description of the students in that section.

Example scatterplot of a school using the DIBELS data system to make educational decisions. The role of alphabetic principle in later reading proficiency.

These scatterplot examples demonstrate how the DIBELS measures can reliably identify and predict a student's later reading proficiency in a time efficient and standardized manner. Once these students are identified, it allows schools to mobilize their instructional resources in a more efficient manner to intervene early with students. Using the DIBELS, schools can reliably identify children who are at-risk for reading difficulties and intervene prior to the development of the negative, intractable trajectory so predictive of reading failure.

This scatterplot displays an entire first grade's performance for each child using their mid-first grade alphabetic principle performance (measured by NWF) with their end-of-first-grade fluency with connected text performance (measured by ORF). Each dot represents an individual student. If you track down from a dot, you will get that student's mid-year performance on the NWF measure (horizontal axis). If you track over to the vertical axis, using the same student, you will get that child's end of first grade ORF score. The green lines within the plot depict the benchmark goal levels for each measure. In this example, the green vertical line is at 50 because that is the goal level for all children to be at or above by the middle of first grade on the NWF measure. Any child to the right of the green vertical line met the mid-year alphabetic principle goal. The green horizontal line is at 40 because that is the goal level for all children to be at or above on the ORF measure by the end of first grade. Any child above the green horizontal line has met the end-of-year ORF goal. The red line depicts the scores that are predictive of later reading difficulty. Children to the left of the red vertical line had a score of less than 20 on the NWF measure and are at serious risk for reading difficulties without a change in instructional program. Students below the red horizontal line had a score of less than 10 on ORF at the end of first grade and are considered to be a non-reader at that point.

While the relation between the NWF and ORF measures is not perfect, it is highly accurate at predicting performance at the ends of the continuum. For example, for the students having established alphabetic principle skills by the middle of first grade, 88 percent of them were established readers by the end of first grade. The odds are in the child's favor of being a reader in first grade if they meet the mid-year goal. Conversely, the odds are stacked heavily against students having a score of less than 20 on NWF in the middle of the year. In this example, of the students with a score of 20 or less in January of first grade on the NWF measure, 0 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 middle of first grade NWF 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 some of the dots in the grade-level scatterplot. In this classroom, of the 3 children in the middle of first grade with a score of less than 20 on NWF, all were nonreaders by the end of first grade. For 8 students with established mid-year alphabetic principle skills, all were established readers at the end of first grade.