i just wanted to add that attitude and understanding what is being asked of them is HUGE in DRA assessments. When DS took his first assessment at the beginning of K last year he tested at a mid 2nd grade level (I can't remember the level). Both his teacher and I agreed at the time that this was probably a slight underestimation due to a relatively lower oral fluency rather than comprehension or decoding ability.
In the spring, after spending several months in the second grade classroom doing second grade work, he tested at a mid first grade level. At the conference that we had immediately after this I got a chance to see the actual assessment sheets and the second one was quite revealing as it contained numerous comments that DS was 'climbing over the back of the seat', reading sections 'in a robot voice' or just plain not answering the teacher. This was in the middle of a very rough period last year where he has decided that he hated everything to do with school. This attitude was reflected in the questions they ask at the beginning. Things like "What's your favorite book?" ('None. I don't like books.') or "How do you choose books to read ('Just take it for no reason.')
The other aspect was understanding what was being asked of him. Specifically, when the teacher asks "Start at the beginning and tell me what happened." that they want specifics. and lots of words. DS's answer was basically a one sentence, six word synopsis ('She helped everyone with the stopwatch'). While this was, in fact, correct, DS did not realize that he was to walk through the story step by step (They get rated based on repeating specific information from the story). When asking DS about the story later he was very capable of going into greater detail but either didn't realize he was supposed to or found it stupid (I'm still not sure which). He was not given any extra prompts except for 'Tell me more' and 'What happened at the beginning?' even though the assessment clearly gives the teacher the latitude to ask more leading questions (ie "What happened before/after _____")
In the end on the level 18 test he was scored 'Advanced' on accuracy, 'Independent' on rate, 'Instructional' on phrasing, and 'Intervention' for expression. As a kid that has difficulty with peer interactions and a slightly irregular speech pattern anyway (he tends to pause his sentences in odd place sometimes, a trait that he picked up years ago as he overcame a stuttering issue), I think using these a features to judge his reading ability greatly changed the outcome.
Sorry for the rant, its just that we've been burned by these too.
