UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

1. Relationship Between Reading Inventory Instructional Level and Student Reading Performance Sandra M. Pulles, Kathrin E. Maki, & Matthew K. Burns College of Education + Human Development Results • Introduction • Instructional match is closely associated with improved student learning (Burns, 2007; Daly, Martens, Kilmer, & Massie, 1996) • Instructional level occurs when students have sufficient background knowledge to interact with the material, yet still experience some level of challenge (Betts, 1946). • Frustrational: <93% • Instructional: 93-97% • Independent: 97-100% • Two ways to assess instructional level • Informal Reading Inventories (IRI) • Fountas & Pinnell(1996) • 20-30 minutes per student; low psychometric properties • Provide students • Curriculum Based Assessment for Instructional Design (CBA-ID; Gickling & Havertape, 1981). • Students read from instructional level text for 1 minute and the number of words read correctly is recorded and accuracy is computed. • 5 minutes per student; high psychometric properties • Research Questions • What level of agreement is there between instructional level estimates from reading three books from the same reading level? • To what extent does the estimate of instructional level from a reading inventory agree with instructional level estimates from reading the corresponding leveled book? • How do reading skills affect agreement between estimate of instructional level from a reading inventory and estimates from reading the corresponding leveled book? Results Table 4 Correlation between IRI Instructional Level and CBA-ID Accuracy and Categorical Score Table 1 Descriptive Statistics and Frequency Data UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Table 5 Number and Percentage of Median Accuracy Scores from Three Reading Performance Assessments that Fell within the Frustration, Instructional, and Independent Level by Skill Group Department of Educational Psychology Table 2 Correlations Among Accuracy Measures from Three Reading Performance Assessments • Method • Participants. • Approximately 64 second (43.8%) • and third (56.3%) grade students. • 51.6% female and 48.6% male • Measures • Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) • Administered by school personnel 3 times per year (fall, winter, and spring). Spring scores were used for analyses. • Students read from 3 one minute grade level passages, and the median score was recorded. • Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System (BAS) • Instructional level determined by spring scores based on fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. • Curriculum Based Assessment for Instructional Design (CBA-ID) • Administered by researchers one time in the spring. • Students read from 3 books (1 minute each) based on their BAS instructional level. • The number of words read correctly divided by the total words read was recorded and the median score was used for analyses. • Discussion • Students did not consistently read with accuracy from books rated at their IRI instructional level • Students read with 93 to 97% accuracy about 28% of the time • Struggling readers frequently failed to read with 93% accuracy • High readers were not challenged enough by their IRI instructional level • Psychometric issues associated with IRIs make it difficult to obtain an accurate student instructional level • Reliability-inconsistency across books • Validity-use of IRIs for determining instructional level • Matching instructional material with student skill level results in improved student outcomes (Burns, 2007) • Students should therefore be reading at their instructional level to ensure adequate reading growth • Limitations • Many students were higher readers therefore limiting generalizability to other skill levels • No direct measure of comprehension was used • There was no control over prior exposure thus it is unknown whether or not students were familiar with the material Table 3 Percent Agreement and Kappa Among Accuracy Measures from Three Reading Performance Assessments School Psychology 250 Education Sciences Building 56 E. River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455 Contacts: Sandra M. Pulles: moran122@umn.edu Kathrin E. Maki: makix312@umn.edu Matthew K. Burns: burns259@umn.edu