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What do experts and research say about Oral Reading Fluency/Accuracy (ORF/A) as a General Outcome Measure for reading proficiency? Note: Fluency is the number of words read correctly in a fixed amount of time (usually indexed per minute); accuracy is the percentage of words read correctly.

M. Susan Burns, Ph.D. Study Director, Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council report entitled Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. 1998.

"Adequate progress in learning to read English (or, any alphabetic language) beyond the initial level depends on sufficient practice in reading to achieve fluency with different texts " Page 223.

"This we can say with certainty: If a child in a modern society like ours does not learn to read, he doesn't make it in life. If he doesn't learn to read well enough to comprehend what he is reading, if he doesn't learn to read effortlessly enough to render reading pleasurable, if he doesn't learn to read fluently enough to read broadly and reflectively across all the content areas, his chances for a fulfilling life, by whatever measure - academic success, financial success, the ability to find interesting work, personal autonomy, self- esteem - are practically nil."

In 1997,Congress asked the "Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to convene a national panel to assess the status of research-based knowledge, including the effectiveness of various approaches to teaching children to read.

In response to this Congressional request, the Director of NICHD, in consultation with the Secretary of Education, constituted and charged a National Reading Panel (the NRP or the Panel). The NRP was composed of 14 individuals, including (as specified by Congress) "leading scientists in reading research, representatives of colleges of education, reading teachers, educational administrators and parents.

Executive Summary - National Reading Panel - Report of the Subgroup on Fluency

"There were a number of reasons why the NRP selected fluency for review and analysis. One is that there is growing concern that children are not achieving fluency in reading. Recently, the National Assessment of Educational Progress conducted a large study of the status of fluency achievement in American education (Pinnell et. al., 1995). That study examined the reading fluency of a nationally representative sample of fourth graders, and found 44% of students to be disfluent even with grade-level stories that the students had read under supportive testing conditions. And furthermore, that study found a close relationship between fluency and reading comprehension. Students who are low in fluency may have difficulty getting the meaning of what they read." Chapter 3, 1.

"Fluent readers can read text with speed accuracy, and proper expression. Fluency depends upon well developed word recognition skills, but such skills do not inevitably lead to fluency. It is generally acknowledged that fluency is a critical component of skilled reading. Nevertheless, it is often neglected in classroom instruction." Chapter 3, 1.

"Because the ability to obtain meaning from print depends so strongly on the development of word recognition accuracy and reading fluency, both should be regularly assessed in the classroom, permitting timely and effective instructional response when difficulty or delay is apparent "(p. 7).

"Fluent readers are able to read orally with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Fluency is one of several critical factors necessary for reading comprehension. Despite its importance as a component of skilled reading, fluency is often neglected in the classroom. This is unfortunate. If text is read in a laborious and inefficient manner, it will be difficult for the child to remember what has been read and to relate the ideas expressed in the text to his or her background knowledge. Recent research on the efficacy of certain approaches to teaching fluency has led to increased recognition of its importance in the classroom and to changes in instructional practices."

Implications for Reading Instruction - Is It Important to Increase Fluency?

"Teachers need to know that word recognition accuracy is not the end point of reading instruction. Fluency represents a level of expertise beyond word recognition accuracy, and reading comprehension may be aided by fluency. Skilled readers read words accurately, rapidly and efficiently. Children who do not develop reading fluency, no matter how bright they are, will continue to read slowly and with great effort." Chapter 3, 3.

Adams, M.J. (l990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge: MIT Press.

"The most salient characteristic of skillful reading is the speed with which text is reproduced into spoken language."

Informed Instruction for Reading Success: Foundations for Teacher Preparation. A position paper of The Orton Dyslexia Society (officially approved by ODS on 2/7/97 by the Society's Board of Directors

Accordingly, measures of ability to read words (especially non words (e.g., pim) in isolation are crucial to recognizing a reading difficulty. It is important to appreciate, in light of the, current interest '-in "authentic" assessment, that such measures are valid and realistic even though they may seem unnatural on the surface. By the mid-elementary years, it is estimated that a child annually encounters thousands of written words that have not been seen before. The child's ability to analyze these new words quickly and accurately affects whether that child is able to "read to learn."

Unfortunately, poor decoding skills in the early grades are highly correlated with limited comprehension and decoding in the later grades: reading problems usually persist. Without direct instruction of the right kind, the child encountering difficulty does not catch up in decoding skill. The common assumption that reading problems in older individuals stem entirely from difficulties in comprehension, that decoding problems are only a stumbling block in the early grades, has been demonstrated to be false. Most older, poor readers continue to have weak phoneme awareness and inaccurate and slow decoding skills.

The good reader excels at word identification, and is able to read either new words or isolated words accurately and quickly. This automatically creates the impression of the reader making a direct psychological between whole words and their meaning without having to analyze words. However, research confirms instead that the skilled reader rapidly and effortlessly translates written words into their spoken equivalents. Central to the reader's expertise is an appreciation of the phonemic structure of words. Skilled readers perform well on listening tasks requiring the identification or manipulation of the sounds in words (e.g., what is "smile" without the "s). As phoneme awareness and good word reading skills develop, the reader is increasingly able to reflect on the meaning and structure of the text. Thus the better reader also tends to be superior at reading comprehension, at awareness of the communicative functions of text, and at knowledge of comprehension strategies.

Every Child Reading: An Action Plan of the Learning First Alliance, 1998. (The Learning First Alliance is composed of the following organizations: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, American Association of School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Council of Chief State School Officers, Education Commission of the States, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of State Boards of Education, National Education Association, National PTA and National School Boards Association.)

An approach does require continually monitoring children's progress both allow those who are progressing quickly to move ahead before they become bored and to ensure that those who are having difficulties get the assistance they need.

In first grade and beyond, regular curriculum-based assessments are needed to guide decisions about such things as grouping, the pace of instruction, and individual needs for assistance (such as tutoring).

Failure to learn to use spelling/sound correspondences to read and spell words is shown to be the most frequent and debilitating cause of reading difficulty.

National Consortium on Oral Reading Fluency, - http://nc-orf.uoregon.edu

On September 15, 2000 a group of professional educators assembled in Portland Oregon to discuss a very powerful and specific reading assessment system: Oral reading fluency. This assessment system was the focus of considerable research under the direction of Dr. Stan Deno at the University of Minnesota, Institute for Research on Learning Disabilities. From 1978 through 1988, a number of studies were conducted, focusing on many different aspects of technical adequacy. For example, studies were conducted on its reliability or the consistency in performance between different passages, judges, and occasions. A number of studies were conducted on the relationship between oral reading fluency and other measures of reading, most often published achievement tests as well as teacher made tests and judgments. In this line of research, it became obvious that the assessment system was technically adequate: Reliability and validity was found documented again and again. Such information was important in ensuring that the standards were met for psychological and educational measurement.

The new standards that have been promulgated recently (AERA, APA, NCME, 2000), however, go beyond the traditional notions of validity in which content and criteria as considered as separate from construct validity, which in turn is unrelated to the decision(s) being made with the assessment systems. Rather, validity has come to be embedded in both an empirical and consequential network among measures and decisions. In the early research on oral reading fluency, such decision-making was considered in the form of allocating resources to children and in evaluating program effects. In some of the studies, oral reading fluency was used to help educators make decisions about eligibility for specialized programs like Title 1 and special education. In other studies, oral reading fluency was used as part of a formative evaluation system, signaling program effects and documenting outcomes.

After a decade of such research and practice, the use of oral reading fluency began to be adopted well beyond the field of special education where it first appeared. Indeed, as part of the inclusion movement of the late 1980s and 1990s, special education needed to be considered as part of general education. And in this trend, oral reading fluency gained credibility in its appropriateness for all students. With large normative databases having been established as part of the eligibility system, general educators began to take note of students' performance overall, not just those in specialized programs.