My son, who is 7.5, is in second grade. The teacher just told us he is at DRA 28, which is the expected score by June. She seemed quite thrilled. However, he's born very early in the year, so he's really scoring about on target, if you consider his date of birth. And, what's more, the score doesn't seem consistent with his reading.

For example, this afternoon, he started reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He spent part of the day doing activities, having dinner, playing Wii, doing activities with me, etc. In spite of that, he is well past page 100. I had him read aloud for 20 minutes and he only needed help with the very occasional word. When I asked him questions about the book and what he was reading, he had no problems with comprehension or recall whatsoever. The book is apparently 5th grade level. He also reads Harry Potter (needing help with vocabulary a little more often) and other books.

What could be going on with the DRA? He is shy. But it sees to me like his score is below his actual abilities.

I am a bit skeptical of the test because, last year at this time, he scored a 2 with the same teacher (who I like). I had him re-assessed a month later and he was a 16.

I just don't want them to miss how he is actually reading. When I was in grade 2, I was reading at an 11th grade level. His father was also reading far above grade level. While it is entirely possible that he would not have our reading skills, I don't want my son's academic needs to be overlooked. I'm concerned that the DRA score is low (see last year) and that he won't be pushed to read at his true level.

Could anyone tell me how the DRA works? Is it possible they are testing for something I'm not seeing?

Thanks for wading through this.

My son (DYS) was stuck at DRA level 28 for nearly a year. After level 28 students must answer in writing rather than orally, which holds back kids who are reading (but not writing) at a very high level. If you are concerned, you may want to request a different reading assessment.

I feel like I see this a lot... children not performing in school on the tests as they do at home. I have the very same problem with the DRA... DS seems to me at a much higher level than where he lands on the assessment (every time!). On the WISC achievement tests he scored a year ahead of grade level in reading. I don't think the teacher is purposely trying to hold him back or downplay his abilities, but I find it very frustrating. As does DS who is adament that he should be able to take books form the higher level basket (leading to him "stealing" books from the higher level basket and/or refusing to pick book any books the level he has been assigned b/c he considers those books "far below him"). I mostly assume it is due to inconsistencybecasue of his convergence issus. So my way of dealing with it is to just provide hhim with books at home for him to log on his reading log. But THEN we get in trouble for not reading the proper books on his "just right reading level." It is a real problem!

Anyway, when I question the teacher about DRA assessment this is the explanation she gave me (it may be helpful for you in terms of understanding how these DRAs work):

"There are three components to the DRA; reading engagement, fluency and comprehension. None of it involves writing (until mid 2nd grade level books are reached) and the only part that involves the vision is the oral reading. I feel that the assessment was accurate as it was the comprehension (oral responses) piece not the fluency that decided where to end the test."

She put the last sentence in bold so she was trying to highlight to me that it isn't because of his vision ... But that is even more disconcerting to me b/c at home his comprehension is very high and standard achievements tests do show that as well. I give up, though...I mean what can I do?

So thinking about this more got me googling... and I found this:

http://www.ehow.com/list_6298667_challenges-developmental-reading-assessment.html

I don't think it matters. If your child was behind, it was be good information to have and a measure of growth, but I don't think it's an issue. Your child will pick books at his level both for interest and ability. I think it's just your job to create an environment where reading is a value in your home and he'll flourish.

My kiddo also had trouble way back when with the DRA assessments and teacher choosing her level of reading. It seemed way out of whack to me. I had no idea about gifted stuff way back then. I use to sneak books on her level into her back pack and told her to read those. I started off in first grade with the Tree House series. They were below her level but the books were small enough to not attract attention and there was some interesting tid bits that she liked to learn. By the end of the year I had given up all trying to hide books by thickness or hard back or whatever...She had all kinds of books that she was taking. I never heard from the teacher and I would just test her comprehension with a few questions here and there. My child is very uncomfortable reading out loud and I think that can really affect how some teachers see the reading ability. My child loves to read and I would do anything I could to protect that love of reading. Sneaking books in for her saved her sanity for awhile. The sneaking started after I met with the teacher and it was apparent that she was adamant that the test scores were accurate and that she had her properly placed. I have a younger child who I will help her learn to read out loud a bit better. Also I think if I was faced with the same dilemma again I would check into Sylvan learning and see what assessments they had. I had my older daughter tested for math with them for very cheap relative to private testing and the information facilitated her into the highly gifted program... They had nationally ranked tests and she got the 99 % she needed. They do not break down the 99 into anything more than 99. Just an idea.

Ohh the main reason I started to write was to include this little that I found on the web. The montessori teacher just gave DD4 a book to read that has DRA level on it so I was checking into it. It claims to be written by a PhD. Have not completed reading it yet. Similar info as in the ehow article posted earlier, just a bit more academic.

http://natalierathvon.com/images/DRA_Review-08-25-2006.pdf

Flower - very very interesting .... I am sort of at my wits end because Ds really hates the system and then the teacher seems to get angry at us for not folloekwing the system... I thought maybe there was something wrong with us! But it seems like we're not!

When my son was in public school they used Fountas-Pinnell for their level assessments. At the beginning of 2nd grade he was at a "W" (5/6 grade). For his first grading period of 3rd he was down to "P". At that point I had already pulled him out but I was assuming the teacher just stopped at that point since it was a high-3 or 4 grade level. Maybe the teacher just stopped at a certain point? Not an acceptable reason at all in my opinion but it can happen even when a teacher allegedly is trained & experienced with GT kids.

You've already gotten lots of great advice - fwiw, I"ll throw another out there that happened to our ds (without us realizing it). Once ds started reading, he was always light-years ahead of grade level so I never paid much attention to testing at school in K-1 because I didn't think it really mattered (his school let the students pick the books they wanted to read once they'd finished going through the prescribed step-groups of beginning readers, and ds had breezed through those with no issues). Anyway, I was picking him up from Kindergarten one afternoon on a day that he'd stayed up until past midnight the night before completely wired. The teacher was so excited to tell me that ds had scored a 23 or something like that on the DRA. I didn't know what the DRA was and didn't really care... but I could tell it must be a good score from what she said and without thinking anything about it, the first thing that slipped out of my mouth was "Really? You mean he was awake enough to take a test the day after he stayed up past midnight?" I wasn't worried about the test, just laughing at the thought that he'd still had enough energy to think clearly. The teacher, otoh, without saying anything else to me, decided to retest since perhaps ds hadn't been up to par... and sure enough, she retested him and his score went way up.

So - just another thing to consider - not everyone has a good test day every time they take a test. Sometimes kids are tired (or not feeling well, or thinking about lunch or whatever). When I get a test result back for one of my kids that doesn't seem to make sense, I try to remember if there was anything else going on that day (no breakfast, no sleep the night before etc) that might have impacted the score.

Best wishes,

polarbear

At our school, the different grades only have access to certain levels of DRA for testing. For the gt classess, the teachers are limited to two grades above grade level. I think that the regular ed classes are the same.

DRA 28 and Diary of a Wimpy Kid are on par, of course Harry Potter would be more in sync with DRA of 40, that is from experience with my boys.

My youngest DD's teacher kept starting her testing well below where she was capable of reading. What this meant for her was that the small mistakes kept her reading level lower than where she was capable of reading and comprehending. i.e. She couldn't move from level 15 to 16 because of small mistakes. After I talked to the school's literacy teacher 3 weeks later and explained she was reading words like "marvelous marshmallow world" and "whipped cream winter wonderland", they retested her as reading at level 21. Ironically, it was the same small mistakes kept her from moving to level 22.

Revmom's experience is exactly how DRA was explained to me. They are strict about the number of mistakes - even small ones - and cannot move to the next level of the testing if they trigger a certain number. DD was stuck at the same level through most of first grade for that reason.

When she was first identified as 2E she couldn't pass a level 4 DRA. The school psych testing her had me sit in and watch. She made more than 20 mistakes (including reading the main character's name wrong each time i.e. saying "Tad" for "Ted".) After completing the book when asked what happened in the story she recounted it, exactly. I mean just about word for word. They explained to me that because of the way the DRA system is structured it would never be something DD would be successful in. Neuropsych eval over the summer between first and second grade showed her reading at mid grade 2 level. Her DRA testing has her solidly a year behind at a level 14. And that 14 was cause for celebration at a recent IEP meeting. YMMV but DRA is just not something we can accept as accurate for our DD.

By the way she is testing DRA 14 at school (first grade) but we are currently on the last few discs of the 7th Harry Potter book (8th grade+) for audio books. So DRA may measure her dyslexic difficulty with decoding but has nothing to do with what her comprehension level would be. Maybe it's because she is so very 2E that the weakness of the system is so apparent for her.

I had a feeling this is what is going on with my son as well. I am not sure yet if he has dyslexia or not but he has the convergence issues and he often sees 'e' as 'a', skips small words, etc. So when we read at home he might read a word like "Ted" as "Tad" and I'll say "no" and he'll quickly correct himself. I am thinking at school that just counts as a mistake. I have had the experience of having him read a book fine at home then the the next day he reads it for the teacher and she'll tell me he "struggled with several words." I think what happens is he sometimes he makes small mistakes due to his vision issues and they count as mistakes whereas at home I just say "look again" and give him a chance to correct himself. I don't know - I just know that DS and I both hate the system ... Ds' teacher tries to make it more palatable - she made a deal with him that on Fridays he can books from any basket and so he loves to bring him the one or two leveled-up books - that is the ONLY time he gets excited about the books and he is super motivated (that and when he manages to "steal" a higher level book).

The thing that is a even more frustrating is that the school staff in general seem to get all adamant about "the system" - the level, the books. I mean I have to point out that it is asinine to force a kid to read these insipid books that he finds, and actually are, mind-numbingly boring! My son LOVED to read, he loves books and he HATES 100 book challenge with a passion. It's weird to me that when you see a kid like that so unhappy why you think that is a good idea to force this. It doesn't matter how much you tell my DS "This is your just right reading level! You should be happy here!" If he hates the books and find s them boring then he isn't going to magically like them and want to do it because you say that the system says he should. YKIM? I just find it ridiculous - this is reading - it should be fun and interesting. Even adults hate and have trouble reading books far below them and/or that they find boring. I mean, seriously - it's not rocket science. The only one who took me seriously was the principal at the iep meeting when it came up. He was the only one he seemed geneuinely concerned that DS finds the books insipid and when I expressed surprised that he was so concerned he said they are having numerous problems and complaints about the system. I swear the other staff at the table glared at him - I am sure someone would have kicked him under the table if they could have. LOL.

Whatever... we are muddling through - I just have books at home that we log ... They can yell at me about it I don't care if I get called to the principal's office LOL.

Sorry to go a little off topic, but I have been following this thread and it made me wonder ... I grew up in Europe, with what seems like a totally different system and aside from about 10 mandatory books we had to read every year and write reports on, we were free to read anything we wanted to. Just had to read a certain number of books / pages if I remember correctly, but nobody every cared about any reading levels and such. There was no numbering system, no testing, you either could read and moved up in classes or couldn't read at the end of 1st grade and stayed in 1st grade for another year.

So, reading this thread, I now wonder what kind of mess am I going to be with my kids once they go to school? Does all this mean they HAVE to read only books at certain level? I mean ... who is actually going to tell them "NO, you can't read this?" DS4 doesn't read yet other than some sight words, though I'm pretty sure he could read if he wanted to. He just has ZERO interest in it. DS2.5 on the other hand is actually starting to follow the lines in the books with his finger and reading all the words he knows or can phonetically decode. He started with simple words 3 months ago and just two days ago I noticed him trying to really read the books. A friend of mine who's a K teacher saw a video of him and told me he's doing what most of her K kids still can't do at the end of K! If he keeps being interested in reading like he is now, does this mean he'll too have to read the books that the other kids in the class will be reading? That's just not making any sense to me?

It depends on the school and teacher. Here the district sends home a single book every summer which is very easy, but with DS they haven't seemed to enforce reading it. (They do insist that parents compile a list of their children's home reading material every month, but we haven't done that either.)

A couple of different types of reading-material restrictions I've personally seen:

1. Restrictions in the classroom, to books available on the shelf. These sorts of restrictions seem easy to get teachers to agree to modify, by sending books from home.

2. Restrictions on what a child can read in, or check out from, the library. For example, at our school the librarian would physically restrict the K-1 students to a certain part of the library with very easy readers. It took a slight bit of advocacy to get that relaxed for DS.

It definitely depends on your district, your school, your teacher. Our district actually does a good job with reading - aside from in-class alphabet review, the kids' reading is honestly assessed. I know kids who were allowed to read their Harry Potter in kindergarten. Their 'just-right' rule is for the kid to read a page, and hold up a finger for every word they struggle with reading or understanding. 2-3 fingers is just-right, 5 fingers is too hard.

wow, the LIBRARIAN restricting books? That's even worse than if a teacher did that. Shouldn't the librarians be happy with the kids wanting to read more advanced books? None of this is making any sense ... but I guess it comes with the gifted territory, right?

Same here. The schools my kids have been in have never restricted what level books the children read as long as they'd been able to show the teacher they'd read the initial set of leveled books in their K-1 classrooms.

I also see the DRA as giving some valuable feedback when children *are* making small mistakes in reading but have a higher level of comprehension. Both of my dds had lower scores on the DRA than would be expected due to their comprehension ability and in both cases, it was an indication that they had a reading challenge that needed to be addressed. My older dd had a vision issue, and my younger dd has a type of associative memory challenge which means that she can comprehend at a much higher level when she listens to audiobooks than she can retain when reading with her eyes. So she listens to audiobooks for comprehension but she still needs to develop her reading skills when reading with her eyes, so to practice that she practices with lower level books than she's capable of comprehending. For a typical child with no challenges, I still think there may be some value in practicing reading skills on books that are below their level of comprehension, things like tracking, not skipping ahead etc. I also suspect that for some of our gifted children who had reading challenges might slip through the cracks until a bit later in school if they didn't have an assessment such as the DRA, simply because they were able to get around reading blocks by putting together contextual clues.

polarbear

Our school librarian had a restricted access policy initially. I emailed her politely and explained that because she had restricted the kids to a certain section, and then told them to make sure their book wasn't too easy for them, my kid came home with no book. I told her that because he has access to almost any book he wants at home, and has plenty of books at his "just right level" at home, we wanted him to learn to pick books by interest at school. I gave her some ideas of things he was reading at home and asked for her expertise for other things he might like.

She emailed me back and said, "he can pick books from anywhere in the library" and gave me some ideas for him for future selections.

Sometimes, those policies are in place to manage the crowd, and when evidence is provided to show that the policy is unnecessary, the school is happy to adjust for the individual child.

I find that easy to believe, but fwiw, here in the UK I haven't come across DRA, children having to do quizzes on what they've read, etc., either. It's common that children in the first two years of school (ages 4-6, we start younger than in the US) will be on a "reading scheme" i.e. reading books specifically written for teaching reading and carefully graded. Once a child can read, though (so in DS's case, immediately on starting school except that his teacher had him read a few scheme books so that he'd know who the standard characters were when it came up in class discussion), they are described as a "free reader" and would, indeed, normally choose school reading books freely. (With some restrictions sometimes, but these relate to subject matter rather than reading level. E.g., the school library at DS's school has fiction shelved under "junior fiction" (mostly for the under 10s) "senior fiction" (for those up to 13) and "scholarship fiction" (things considered challenging for 12-13yos) - this is guidance rather than rule, though.)

There is "guided reading" in which a small group of children reads the same book with an adult, e.g., taking it in turns to read pages aloud and discussing in the group what's going on, what the characters are like, what might happen next, features of the language, and all that jazz. But this is quite separate from what they read for their reading practice, and indeed, they are not allowed to read the guided reading book on their own because they are not supposed to know in advance what will happen next!

I know the feeling. I've read justifications including wanting children to focus on comprehension instead of just decoding (which doesn't make sense because if children weren't getting meaning out of material they wouldn't tend to read it for pleasure) and wanting to keep children from reading above their comfort zone (ditto).

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.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are Lexile 900-1000, which would be DRA 50 or above according to the chart I have. I think the books are overrated in the Lexile system, but still. DOAWK is high-interest and has a lot of pictures, so I think many kids stretch past their level to read it.

FWIW, DD has never been disallowed from reading anything in school libraries or in her classrooms as far as I know. All has been fair game. She entered K reading very well so perhaps it has never been an issue. However, I have never--that's right, never--been given a reading level for her. She has also attended somewhat unsual schools (a charter and a magnet).