To:

Members, Board of Education

From:

Maurice O. Green, Superintendent
Beth Folger, Chief Curriculum and Organizational Development Officer

Date:

October 24, 2008

RE:

K-2 Literacy and Intervention Prevention – DIBELS Implementation

The following indicators created an urgency to develop an assessment  system to detect early reading difficulty in order to prevent reading failure for our students:

• More than18% (or about 900 grade 3 students) were not proficient in reading according to 2007 End-of-Grade (EOG) scores prior to remediation.
• The reauthorization of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 requires that students receive proper instruction prior to intervention and proper intervention prior to eligibility to Special Education or Exceptional Children services. This began the NC Responsiveness to Instruction model which GCS has termed Intervention Prevention.
• The 2006-07 Literacy Audit conducted by McREL recommended an evaluation of the literacy assessment system for grades PreK-5.

The current reading assessment used in K-2 classrooms is the Developmental Reading Assessment K-3 (DRA K-3). This is a type of running record that measures reading comprehension and yields an instructional level for grouping students. Guilford County Schools needed an assessment that is research-based, nationally-normed, quick to administer, and yields data that is easily analyzed.

The departments of Psychological Services, Exceptional Children, and Curriculum and Instruction, along with 12 elementary schools, began the search. After a six-month pilot of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI), Achievement Improvement Monitoring System (AIMSweb), and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), the group of 12 schools agreed that DIBELS was the best tool for GCS.

DIBELS assesses the key predictors of reading success: fluency and phonemic awareness. It is administered by the teacher to individual students three times per year using a hand held device. The data is uploaded to the DIBELS website where it is immediately available to the teacher for instructional decision-making. This allows the data to follow the student from grade-to-grade and school-to-school within GCS. The schedule of assessments per grade is attached. The data is analyzed and compared to national norms of typically developing students at that precise time of their school year. If a student is scoring below expected norms the teacher is provided with intervention strategies from the Now What? tools to use in class.  Teachers can make data-driven decisions about instructional grouping, and what, specifically, the students need next. Additionally, a student-specific Home Connect document is sent to parents/guardians informing them of their child’s reading strengths and areas for improvement. Home Connects includes recommended activities to support reading at home.  

Teachers participate in one day of professional development in order to learn how to administer the assessments and use the hand held device. This training is provided at the school by a trainer who is designated to support the school. The trainer also provides fidelity checks during the assessment administration to ensure that consistent and proper protocols are used. A three-hour follow-up session is held to learn how to analyze the data after the teachers have completed DIBELS administration. Protocols for discussing the data and problem-solving at grade level meetings are provided to teachers as well.

Following is a list of the 20 schools that began administration of DIBELS this fall, as well as those schools whose teachers will be trained on February 20, 2009. The remaining elementary schools will begin implementation in August of 2009.

Elementary schools that began implementation of DIBELS on August 25, 2008:

Elementary schools scheduled to begin implementation of DIBELS on February 20, 2009:

Attachment #1 - Timeline
Attachment #2 - Presentation
Attachment #3 - Reports