The Importance of Growth in Oral Reading Fluency to Predict Performance on High-Stakes Assessments among Students Receiving Supplemental Intervention

Abstract Educators and researchers measure student improvement in words read correct per minute (WRCM) to evaluate student response to reading interventions. The utility of evaluating improvement in WRCM via curriculum-based measures to make instructional decisions is based upon the assumption that growth in WRCM is predictive of performance on meaningful distal outcomes (e.g., state achievement tests). This study explored the relative value of measuring growth in WRCM to predict performance on an end of year state achievement test after controlling for baseline performance. We used quantile regression to analyze outcomes from 449 grade three students receiving tier II reading interventions to measure the relationship between growth in WRCM and performance on an end of year test across different levels of performance on that test. Results suggest that growth in WRCM is a meaningful predictor of performance on the end of year test after statistically controlling for baseline performance amongst students that perform better on that test (> 50th percentile). However, the amount of explained variance was consistently small (< 5%). Progress monitoring measures that more closely resemble the criterion of interest may be worth exploring for students that have made the transition from fluency to comprehension, while measures targeting lower order skills may be warranted for students with persistent fluency deficits.