Report 1.1: Do Fluency Measures Predict Reading Achievement? Results from the 2002-2003 School Year in Michigan’s Reading First Schools (Adobe PDF)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the relationship between these fluency-based assessments and the year-end measures of reading achievement (reading subtests of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills). A number of research reports have been published in recent years that show concurrent relations of one particular measure of progress monitoring, oral reading fluency (ORF), and year-end reading achievement (Barger, 2003, Bucks & Torgesen, 2003; Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001; Good, et al., 2001). These have shown that students’ performance on measures of oral reading fluency are significantly related to reading comprehension. Similarly, Good et al. (2001)
has shown that almost all (96%) of third graders scoring above the DIBELS benchmark on ORF met expectations on a statewide comprehensive assessment of reading.