LeRoy was a deaf sixth grader who used signs and his voice to communicate. Yanetta was a deaf eighth grader who had deaf parents and preferred American Sign Language (ASL). Michael was a deaf fifth grader in a suburban school who attended an oral program and used his voice exclusively to communicate. All three students struggled with reading. They…

Schools across the nation are responding to reading assessment mandates by turning to DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), a program endorsed by the Federal Reading First Grant Office, to assess fluency on a range of reading-related tasks. DIBELS makes strong claims regarding its usefulness in documenting reading progress…