Fucking education! How does it work?

[Ensign Steve]

I'm not defending the DIBEL, just answering the question I quoted.

[LadyShea]

I'm not defending the DIBEL, just answering the question I quoted.

Oh I know, and I appreciate it. I can see an application for it to asses language acquisition aptitude.

I am just trying to understand why they would teach non-words to new readers on purpose.

I found a paper on the subject

The measure expressly avoids tapping student skills in reading real words because it may not be clear what strategies the student is using to accurately read real words (e.g., actually reading a word by deciphering the constituent letter-sound correspondences instead of recalling the whole word from memorization without knowledge of the constituent letter sounds).

If the kid is reading the word and understanding what is being read, why does it matter what "strategy" he/she is using?

Sorry, I have no idea why this hit me so hard. I really, really, really don't get it at all, to the point that it seems insane to me.

ETA: I found this wrt reading real English passages to assess reading

This performance (reading passages aloud) entails, for example, a reader's skill at automatically translating letters into coherent sound representations, unitizing those sound components into recognizable wholes and automatically accessing lexical representations, processing meaningful connections within and between sentences, relating text meaning to prior information, and making inferences to supply missing information. As competent readers translate text into spoken language, they coordinate these skills in an obligatory, seemingly effortless manner (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001).

All those connections and inferences and processes are what reading is, to me. Reading nonsense words makes no connections...does it?

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Oh I know, and I appreciate it. I can see an application for it to asses language acquisition aptitude.

I am just trying to understand why they would teach non-words to new readers on purpose.

I guess I'm confused about whether you're talking about teaching or testing? It seems like for the DIBEL (and definitely for the DLAB) it's not about teaching anything, but testing ability or aptitude.

Just spit-balling here but, if a kid taking the test cannot read full English yet, but he knows how to read some phonics, then it seems this test would reflect that. I imagine that a kid who can read full English would have an okay time sounding out the nonsense words as well.

Then of course you get into the issue of the teachers teaching the test, but that's an issue on every standardized test, not just this one, no?

[LadyShea]

I guess I'm confused about whether you're talking about teaching or testing? It seems like for the DIBEL (and definitely for the DLAB) it's not about teaching anything, but testing ability or aptitude.

They do both. It's not a one time test, it's an ongoing assessment (3 times a year through 3rd grade IIRC), so the curriculum includes practicing reading lists of nonsense words....IOW yeah, they are teaching to the tests

if a kid taking the test cannot read full English yet, but he knows how to read some phonics, then it seems this test would reflect that.

Here's a list used in NWF
wab
lon
deg
pev
yil
baf
huz

Wouldn't a test of words like cat, man, top, peg, hit, fun etc. assess the same thing?

A second problem is that competent phonological pho·nol·o·gy
n. pl. pho·nol·o·gies
1. The study of speech sounds in language or a language with reference to their distribution and patterning and to tacit rules governing pronunciation.

2. decoding is, especially as the year progresses, better represented by the capacity to decode a variety of phonetic patterns. So, students who perform well on nonsense word fluency's consonant-vowel-consonant pseudowords may or may not be skilled at reading consonant-vowel-consonant -e words, r-controlled words, dual vowel vowel

Speech sound in which air from the lungs passes through the mouth with minimal obstruction and without audible friction, like the i in fit. The word also refers to a letter representing such a sound (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). words, multisyllabic words, etc. The restriction of the nonsense word fluency task to a single, easy phonetic pattern may reduce the correlation between nonsense word fluency and important criterion measures.

Present findings are reminiscent of earlier work demonstrating the superiority of word identification fluency over nonsense word fluency with a different sample of first graders with more severe reading difficulties (Fuchs, 2003). For that sample of 36 at-risk students who received one-to-one tutoring across the second semester of first grade, nonsense word fluency slopes failed to reliably discriminate dis·crim·i·nate
v. dis·crim·i·nat·ed, dis·crim·i·nat·ing, dis·crim·i·nates

v.intr.
1.
a. student performance on key indicators of reading competence at the end of first grade. In that study, a median split was performed on the slopes of these 36 children, creating a group of children with the top 18 slopes and another group with the bottom 18 slopes. The average effect size comparing these two groups of children on end-of-year indicators of reading competence and on fall-to-spring reading growth was .4 standard deviations, and the difference in the performance of these two groups was statistically significantly different on only one of the eight criterion measures. By contrast, when top versus bottom groups were formed on the basis of word identification fluency slopes, the average effect size comparing the groups exceeded 1 standard deviation, and the performance of students with the top-half slopes versus those with bottom-half slopes were statistically significantly different on all eight year-end indicators of reading competence and fall-to-spring reading growth. Current findings corroborate those earlier findings, showing how improvement across time on word identification fluency functions better than nonsense word fluency for forecasting end-of-first-grade reading status (as well as reading improvement).
[urlhttp://www.thefreelibrary.com/Monitoring+early+reading+development+in+first+grad e%3a+word...-a0124134283]Monitoring early reading development in first grade: word identification fluency versus nonsense word fluency.[/url]

This research seems to support my gut feelings on the subject.

I really need to figure out a way to keep Kiddo home. I can't even read the Kindergarten curriculum and test schedule without seeing red and spending hours looking shit up. Kiddo and I have been working on r controlled vowels for 2 weeks. He is beyond sounding out dog

[Sock Puppet]

Just guessing, but couldn't it be an attempt to measure phonics skills separately from sight-word recognition?

[BrotherMan]

Or the ability to infer meaning via context?

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

Just guessing, but couldn't it be an attempt to measure phonics skills separately from sight-word recognition?

Yes, but to what purpose? Eventually all familiar words become recognized sight words. If the kid can sound out an unfamiliar word to learn it, then recognize it automatically later, that's reading.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by BrotherMan

Or the ability to infer meaning via context?

I'll need you to expand on that

[Sock Puppet]

I'd guess the purpose is to determine whether a kid is having trouble using phonics in general. Maybe a solution in search of a problem, sure.

[LadyShea]

Maybe a solution in search of a problem

Since we are talking about one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, that's probably the explanation right there...sorta what mega-systems tend to do.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Since we are talking about one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, that's probably the explanation right there...sorta what mega-systems tend to do.

I was thinking the opposite, sort of. It sounds like the sort of thing someone with a very narrowly specialized focus in phonetics might come up with. Where are our freaking linguists? Maybe they know this shit.

[LadyShea]

I doubt our linguists read my rantings. Maybe a town crier bat signal is needed.

[Adam]

I am your humble servant.

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Has anyone else ever heard of this shit? WTF? Is there any data or evidence to suggest that nonsense word fluency demonstrates improvement in reading comprehension or learning to read?

I wouldn't think it was measuring improvement, just whether the child understands the rules they have learned from their phonics lessons. If you used real English words, then there is a chance that the children already know those words.

Not every kindergarten or 1st grade student is going to be a new reader--I wasn't, and your child probably isn't going to be either. If you want to measure phonics skill, then you need to do that apart from whether the children know every three letter English word.

Why would you want to measure phonics skill apart from vocabulary or reading skill in general? I don't know, maybe phonics means that the children will be more likely to improve their reading levels at age appropriate levels. Maybe it measures teacher's ability to teach that skill. Maybe if a student has a particular problem with phonics it is a flag that their brains aren't processing information the usual way, and they need some additional tools.

[S.Vashti]

An anecdote from long ago: I was "taught" to read using phonics. It didn't "take" until third grade, I was in the lowest reading group up until the summer between second and third grade. Previous, I was able to read short sentences and words by brute force memorization, but that method eventually chokes when you get to reading the interesting books.

I don't think phonics with fake words worked for me, because I wasn't able to carry the information back to the current habit I was in of memorizing words. I don't know what broke inside me during the summer, but phonics suddenly (and I mean very suddenly) began to make sense, and I started using it everywhere, even on words I had previously memorized.

I'm thinking this is testing whether or not phonic rules, which are quite separate from reading, have been incorporated into a child's reading habits.

[LadyShea]

I'm thinking this is testing whether or not phonic rules, which are quite separate from reading, have been incorporated into a child's reading habits.

But if they are reading, why is it necessary for phonics rule integration to be tested? Why is it important that non words be used?

BTW: I appreciate the use of nonsense words in a literary or poetic sense for older students (Jabberwocky's ability to call forth imagery for a well known example), but it just seems to send the wrong message to beginning readers.

[lisarea]

I don't know anything about this system except the shit I just done skimmed right now, but my impression is that it is designed to measure reading potential rather than current ability. If it used real, common morphemes for testing, kids who had greater exposure to reading and to the language in general would score higher, even if they weren't really getting the underlying principles; and on the other hand, kids who had good reading potential and who better understood the principles, but had less exposure to reading or language in the home would score lower.

Same deal with using special English spelling rules. Eliminating special rules like silent Es lets you better separate potential from training.

So as a tool designed to eliminate confounding cultural factors, it seems like a good idea. But, of course, all that would go out the window entirely if they start 'teaching to the test.' The benefits I can see from it are all from eliminating the 'teaching' factor.

[LadyShea]

designed to measure reading potential rather than current ability

Okay, but what would be the purpose of assessing reading potential?

Oh and thanks everyone. I have been trying to kill the high achiever in my head (she pops up a lot more than I had expected, though you probably can't tell), and closely examining the purposes and structure and scope of these things is doing the job.

[S.Vashti]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

But if they are reading, why is it necessary for phonics rule integration to be tested? Why is it important that non words be used?

To avoid the possibility that the child has brute strength memory and is using that instead? The test isn't able to tell the difference between someone who has incorporated phonics into reading, and someone who has memorized short words. To get around this, the test eschews the use of words deemed likely to be memorized. It's possible there is a better way to test if phonics teaching has worked with using words possibly memorized, but the current tests lack that.

BTW: I appreciate the use of nonsense words in a literary or poetic sense for older students (Jabberwocky's ability to call forth imagery for a well known example), but it just seems to send the wrong message to beginning readers.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Okay, but what would be the purpose of assessing reading potential?

I assume it's to distinguish kids who are scoring high based on simple memorization and sight reading without understanding the basic underlying principles, from the kids who understand the principles better but who don't have the experience and training yet.

Rote memorization can only get you so far, and if you find out in junior high or high school that a kid has been simply memorizing written words rather than having the skills to figure them out, it's going to be really hard to teach them the skills they need to get their reading abilities to an adult level.

Sight reading, ideally, would just happen naturally, as you encounter a word often enough that you can just recognize it without effort. Memorization doesn't really teach you the necessary skills to expand your knowledge. You need to understand the mechanics of reading and writing to really be literate.

[LadyShea]

I guess I am not understanding why the strategy used by the individual, whether phonics or memorization or a combination that works for that individual, is important to measure at all. Aren't the results, reading and comprehending, the important factor? And remember, these are specifically used in K, 1st and 2nd, so we are talking about beginning readers.

Rote memorization can only get you so far

Yeah but we aren't talking about rote memorization, which requires drills and repetitions and such if I understand the term correctly. We are talking about kids being actively taught phonics in a classroom. Some of them may have a brain that makes sense of it all more quickly, and less systematically, without the "processes" being measurable.

Maybe if I put it another way. Lets say Kid A learned to read systematically using phonics, and Kid B started reading spontaneously -which is almost always a whole language/memory type deal and from innate abilities.

Both can read passages and answer questions about the passages equally well at age 7. Why does it matter how they read or how they learned to read? Why would it have been important to test their phonetic abilities for the 2 years prior?

Gah, I am not expressing my point well at all, sorry about that.

[wildernesse]

Here is the website for DIBELS. It looks like the measurements, including the nonsense word eval, is to predict reading potential, like lisarea said. If a child has low reading potential, then they need additional help learning the basics and the teacher can work on that.

You can sign up and download the materials for free, if you want to look at them. It contains the warning:

Message to Parents: You should not use these materials to coach your child. If your child is being tested by his or her school, coaching them on the materials will invalidate the results. DIBELS is never used to grade your child; instead, it is used to identify students who need additional instructional support. If you coach your child, you may be removing instructional support that he or she needs.

[LadyShea]

Predicting potential isn't making much sense to me in this case. Predicting what exactly? For when? Would the teacher not be able to easily determine through regular English word evaluations who needs additional support?

From Wildy's link:

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Skills

* Sound and Word discrimination: What word doesn't belong with the others: "cat", "mat", "bat", "ran"? "ran"
* Rhyming: What word rhymes with "cat"? bat
* Syllable splitting: The onset of "cat" is /k/, the rime is /at/
* Blending: What word is made up of the sounds /k/ /a/ /t/? "cat"
* Phonemic segmentation: What are the sounds in "cat"? /k/ /a/ /t/
* Phoneme deletion: What is "cat" without the /k/? "at"
* Phoneme manipulation: What word would you have if you changed the /t/ in cat to an //n/? "can"

These can all be done without nonsense words. This is exactly the kind of stuff I do to assess Kiddo...randomly changing the first letter, last letter, or vowel quickly eliminates guessing and memorization as the source of the word.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I guess I am not understanding why the strategy used by the individual, whether phonics or memorization or a combination that works for that individual, is important to measure at all. Aren't the results, reading and comprehending, the important factor?

Yeah but we aren't talking about rote memorization, which requires drills and repetitions and such if I understand the term correctly. We are talking about kids being actively taught phonics in a classroom. Some of them may have a brain that makes sense of it all more quickly, and less systematically, without the "processes" being measurable.

Maybe if I put it another way. Lets say Kid A learned to read systematically using phonics, and Kid B started reading spontaneously -which is almost always a whole language/memory type deal and from innate abilities.

Both can read passages and answer questions about the passages equally well at age 7. Why does it matter how they read or how they learned to read? Why would it have been important to test their phonetic abilities for the 2 years prior?

The problem is that you can only get so far by memorizing words or by simple sight reading. So a kid might be doing fine when they're seven, and the problem wouldn't really become apparent until they're fourteen or so, when it's going to be much harder to go back and teach them the underlying principles.

To make an analogy, you can simply memorize things like 'times tables' and solutions to simple arithmetic problems and some simple algebra formulas, and that will get you good grades in math until probably some time in middle or high school, depending on your memorization skills and on your specific education. But then, you start to encounter problems that you have to solve all on your own, without having the formula handed to you. If you don't know how to break the problem down and think about it logically because you never had to do that before, you're kind of fucked. You're now in junior high or so and you don't even have an elementary school understanding of how numbers work, which leaves you pretty much stunted unless and until you go back and re-learn the principles you should have been learning in Kindergarten.

It's the same thing with reading. Kids at those young ages are dealing with a very limited word hoard--one that is possible to master simply through memorization. But if they skate by just memorizing, they're going to be very ill equipped to master anything much beyond that using those techniques; and ensuring that they're understanding the basic mechanics of reading ensures that even if they don't need those abilities right now, they'll have them later when they will really need them.

Everyone eventually develops sight reading skills simply by repeated encounters with the same words, but to get to an adult reading level, you need to understand the underlying mechanics of how words are put together that you can fall back on when you encounter a new word.

Without some kind of objective tool to measure not just what a kid knows, but how they're figuring it out, you're not going to find out who does and doesn't understand the mechanics until it's too late.

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I guess I am not understanding why the strategy used by the individual, whether phonics or memorization or a combination that works for that individual, is important to measure at all. Aren't the results, reading and comprehending, the important factor? And remember, these are specifically used in K, 1st and 2nd, so we are talking about beginning readers.

Yes, but how do you measure whether a child is on the path to reading? It isn't as if there are just two groups: readers and non-readers. What about the children who aren't getting to the reading part? This measures what a child might be missing in order to get to reading.

Yeah but we aren't talking about rote memorization, which requires drills and repetitions and such if I understand the term correctly. We are talking about kids being actively taught phonics in a classroom. Some of them may have a brain that makes sense of it all more quickly, and less systematically, without the "processes" being measurable.

They aren't measuring the processes, though. They are measuring the result--whether the child knows what S sounds like. A child who doesn't know that S sounds like S won't be able to say that "sab" is the word that starts with the S sound.

Maybe if I put it another way. Lets say Kid A learned to read systematically using phonics, and Kid B started reading spontaneously -which is almost always a whole language/memory type deal and from innate abilities.

Both can read passages and answer questions about the passages equally well at age 7. Why does it matter how they read or how they learned to read? Why would it have been important to test their phonetic abilities for the 2 years prior?

Perhaps it is unlikely that children who don't know phonics can read at the same level over time. Perhaps Kid B's writing and spelling ability is less than Kid A's, despite similar reading comprehension.

What about Kid A and Kid C, though? Kid C reads below grade level. Wouldn't it be better to know earlier what sounds she wasn't understanding?