Using a ruler or straightedge for tracking is an approved accommodation for those children who need it. The Administration and Scoring Guide includes a list of all approved accommodations. Accommodations should only be used with children who require them.

Yes, DIBELS is designed to be administered to all students who are learning to read English. We don't have any specific guidelines for administering DIBELS to students learning to speak and read English. While the measures are standardized and should be given to all students in the same manner, there are a few accommodations that can be made when necessary and are specified in the chapter on Approved Accommodations in the Administration and Scoring Guide available from our Download Materials page.

Yes, DIBELS can be used with special education students. DIBELS is designed to be administered to all students who are learning to read in English and who are physically capable of taking the tests. You would generally only exclude students who are deaf, who stutter, who are completely nonverbal, or who have severe phonological difficulties.
During the benchmark screening of all students, students receiving special education should be administered grade-level materials. When progress monitoring you can use materials at the students' instructional-level if the grade-level materials are too difficult to show response to instruction.

DIBELS scores should never be used to grade a student. The measures should only be used for instructional decision-making (i.e., to identify students who need additional instructional support and monitoring response to intervention). DIBELS scores should only be given to parents in conjunction with an appropriate explanation. Use our Parent Tip Sheet and our Parent Guide

We do not allow alteration of the DIBELS materials. Page 14 of the Administration and Scoring Guide discusses the reasoning behind the chosen fonts for DIBELS 8th Edition.

No, you should never practice the DIBELS measures with your students, even probes that they won't be tested on for real. You want to keep a clear distinction between "teaching time" and "testing time." You should teach your students reading and pre-reading skills, but you would never practice the DIBELS measures.

All efforts should be made to minimize the possibility of a child asking for a word to be repeated (e.g., relatively quiet assessment space, sit close to the child, speak clearly); however, there are times when it does occur and, if so, repeat the word. If it happens occasionally, it is "small stuff." If it happens frequently for a particular child, you might want to check into hearing issues. If it happens frequently for many children, look at the assessment conditions and make necessary adjustments.

DIBELS is actually used best as a suite of assessments using the composite score to assess risk. Composite scores are the most valid predictor of reading risk.

Composite scores should only be calculated with all the grade level appropriate tests administered unless the discontinue/gating rules were followed.
You can find more about this in the Administration and Scoring Guide which can be downloaded from the Testing Materials page https://dibels.uoregon.edu/materials, by clicking on "DOWNLOAD DIBELS MATERIALS" and clicking through the Educational Use Agreement.
Page 130 is where the constants are listed for discontinued and gated administrations.

There is a Composite Score Calculation Guide Supplement on the Resources page https://dibels.uoregon.edu/resources

DIBELS 8th Edition only uses one ORF passage per benchmark period.

Yes. The benchmark goals increase over time, so a student who meets the beginning-of-year goal is not guaranteed to meet the middle- or end-of-year goal. Screening all students at each time period will enable timely identification of students who are not continuing to progress in their literacy development. Additionally, screening the entire school enables the school or district a complete data set to evaluate how all students are responding to instruction.

The passages are intended to be equivalent in grade level. They do not progress in difficulty in any systematic manner. Each passage balances decodability, Lexile level, and various measures of comprehensibility. You can find out more about this in the Appendix A of the Administration and Scoring Guide.

The guide can be accessed from the Testing Materials Page. Just click on the "DOWNLOAD DIBELS MATERIALS" button and the Guide is the first link on the page after the click-through use agreement. https://dibels.uoregon.edu/materials

If you are interested in a digital version of DIBELS, Amplify offers DIBELS 8th Edition through mCLASS. https://amplify.com/programs/mclass/.
You can connect with Amplify by visiting their support page: https://amplify.com/support/

In creating cut scores, we predict to a different measure of reading achievement at the end of the year. The red/intensive-support/at-risk cut identifies students who are highly likely to perform below the 20th percentile on that measure at the end of the year without intensive intervention. The benchmark cut differentiates between students who are highly likely to perform below the 40th percentile (yellow/strategic-support/some-risk) and above the 40th percentile (green/core-support/low-risk). The blue/core-support/negligible-risk cut is not a growth goal, but is the score at which students are almost certain to perform at or above the 40th percentile.

Depending on what you are looking for, there are a couple of options.

If you are looking to have a Data System to track progress while using the DIBELS 8 measures, you will need to contact our partners at Amplify Education. They now manage the DIBELS Data System. You can find out more by visiting their website at https://dibels.amplify.com

Amplify also has mCLASS which is an online version of DIBELS that includes a few measures developed at Amplify. You can find out more about this on their website: https://amplify.com/programs/mclass/

You can connect with Amplify about either system by visiting their support page: https://amplify.com/support/

If you want to use DIBELS 8th Edition as a paper/pencil screening/benchmark assessment with no data system, you can download all the testing materials from our materials page for free, just click the "DOWNLOAD DIBELS MATERIALS" button and then click through the Educational Use Agreement. From there you can access all the measures as well as the Administration and Scoring Guide which will give you a relatively comprehensive overview of the DIBELS 8th Edition Materials. https://dibels.uoregon.edu/materials

You can also view the Resources page on our website that provides some overview information in videos. https://dibels.uoregon.edu/resources

Please contact our partner, Amplify Education for questions about DIBELS Data System Account access as they now manage that system. You can contact them directly at https://amplify.com/support/ or by visiting their website at https://dibels.amplify.com

Checkout our DIBELS Tips for Families and our Parent Guide to DIBELS Assessment which can be found on our Resources page https://dibels.uoregon.edu/resources

We no longer provide training directly from the University of Oregon.

On our Resources page, you'll find a list of certified trainers who can offer professional development, both in person and virtual. https://dibels.uoregon.edu/resources

Amplify Education has Online Professional Development courses that are relatively reasonably priced: https://dibels.amplify.com/training/

If a student completes the assessment in less than one minute, you end the assessment and record the score.

You score the last thing that the student responded with based on the directions in the Administration and Scoring Guide, available from our Download Materials page. Credit can be given for WRC when the blend is correct and it occurs after the student says the individual letter sounds.

You can accept an answer as correct if the student provides (a) a reasonable phonetic pronunciation of the name, or (b) the correct pronunciation of the name if the correct pronunciation of the name is non-regular and the tester knows the correct pronunciation. The developers worked hard to ensure that included names are reasonably accessible. During standardized administration the tester provides the correct pronunciation if the student struggles for 3 seconds.

The Kindergarten and 1st grade benchmark booklets include PSF scoring sheets. There are no student materials for PSF since it's an auditory measure.

Please try the following:

Make sure that you have the most up-to-date version of Adobe Reader or Acrobat

Make sure that your system is running the most up-to-date operating system.

Make sure that your computer isn’t trying to open the zip folder in Internet Explorer (IE). It has issues with secured documents.

Make sure you have downloaded the zip file and then unzip the file from your computer, not from the internet browser (this will be in a “downloads” folder on a Windows computer.)

Yes, when scoring ORF you are counting the words read correctly. If a student does not read a word correctly, they do not get credit for it.

Roughly, the windows for benchmark are as follows:
• Beginning of year – Month 1-3 of the school year
• Middle of year – month 4-6 of the school year
• End of year – month 7-9 of the school year

Generally you would want to administer earlier in the window for BOY, middle for MOY, and end for EOY to get the best assessment of growth and alignment to how benchmarks were set.

No, you should teach your students letter-sound correspondences and blending. Once students begin developing these skills, their performance will generalize to the NWF score.

No. The directions indicate that you direct the students to the first word of the passage. If they do accidentally read the title and hesitate for 3 seconds on a word, then you should supply the correct word. Do not start the timer until they read the first word of the passage.

University of Oregon (2021). 8th Edition of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS ®). Eugene, OR: University of Oregon. Available: https://dibels.uoregon.edu/

If a student skips an entire line during ORF, draw a line through the row and count the words as incorrect when scoring.

If you run out of probes (i.e., finish all 20 probes), you can start over at the beginning of the booklet. Note that you should only repeat a passage when progress monitoring, and only in this specific instance.

Letter Naming Fluency should not be progress monitored. It is different from the other measures in that it is not aligned with one of the five major skill areas in beginning reading. It's used for benchmark screening because it is a good indicator of risk, but shouldn't be monitored beyond that.

Cut-scores are determined using Receiver Operating Curve analyses and choosing a score that optimally predicts to end of year reading performance. In this case, the passage for the middle of the year simply results in faster reading rates for high-achieving students. It most likely has to do with the content of the passages.

Administering one ORF passage saves considerable testing time, and research shows it provides nearly the same screening accuracy as administering three passages.