I suspect, as Zen mentioned, that your ds' visual challenges may have influenced his scores - but I would also want to compare the results of this test to his neurospych testing - was there any question of reading challenges on that, or does he have lower scores on the tests that relate to skills needed for reading?
The Dibels is used in our school district in early elementary to screen children for dyslexia and other potential reading challenges, and scoring low on nonsense words relative to the part of the test that has the child sound out real words is a red flag. Another potential red flag are reading comprehension scores higher than individual word sounding out etc or reading from short sentences - in gifted children, this can be a sign that they are actually struggling with reading skills but able to make up for the words they miss when reading because they can put together meaning from context. I am most likely not explaining this well, but I see it all the time with my younger dd who has a reading challenge.
One thing I'd do when your ds reads to you is to watch and see if he stumbles over any individual words that may seem like words he should know. Which is tricky, of course, because that could be due to vision or it could be due to a reading skills challenge. I think what I'd do, for now, is to not worry, pay attention while he reads out loud to you, and also ask the school for further testing to determine why his nonsense word score was relatively low. There are other relatively simple reading tests that can be given which can be very helpful in determining if there is a reading challenge, and I would think with a Dibels score that low on the subtest the school would be willing to do further testing.
FWIW (probably not much lol!) - my dd who has the vision challenges had the Dibels administered in (I'm guessing here - memory is failing me re details) - early 2nd grade when she hadn't yet had her vision issues diagnosed but was struggling with reading. She actually did a-ok on the nonsense words and individual sounds but scored low on the last portion of the booklet that has longer sentences.
Hope this makes sense!
polarbear
