USEFUL NATURE OF DIBELS

The Useful Nature of Dibels

The Useful Nature of Dibels

Introduction

DIBELS stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. DIBELS was designed as a tool for ongoing progress monitoring of the acquisition of reading skills and for early identification of children with reading problems. The original DIBELS included 10 measures assessing sound-symbol relationships (i.e., the student is able to say the sounds that a letter makes), phonemic awareness (i.e., knowledge of the sounds made by each letter and the ability to blend them into a word), language development, and knowledge of print and letter names. Research shows that DIBELS is a reliable and valid measure of the acquisition of early reading skills. School psychologists use DIBELS to detect children who might need additional help in learning to read and to monitor the progress of the special instruction that is implemented (Lundberg & Beeler, 1998).

Initial research on DIBELS was conducted at the University of Oregon in the late 1980s. Since then, an ongoing series of studies on DIBELS has documented the reliability and validity of the measures as well as their sensitivity to student change. The DIBELS authors were motivated then, as now, by the desire to improve educational outcomes for children, especially those from poor and diverse backgrounds. Research on DIBELS continues at Dynamic Measurement Group (DMG) and at numerous universities and research institutions around the world.

DIBELS were developed to monitor growth in the acquisition of critical early literacy skills to (a) identify children in need of intervention and (b) evaluate the effectiveness of intervention strategies. Ongoing research on DIBELS, supported by the Early Childhood Research Institute on Measuring Growth and Development (ECRI-MGD), has generated a large database supporting the psychometric adequacy of the DIBELS (Good et al., in press). We have a clear knowledge based on ...