More about the DRAs

This morning Katy, the literacy consultant at the school, showed me how to administer the DRA reading assessment.  It begins with the student reading a page or two of a small book while the administrator of the test reads the same test on a printed sheet and makes a “running record” of all the mistakes the child makes while reading aloud. It is also timed, of course.  How fast can the child read?

I am not sure what the skill is that the test purports to measure.  Having read many books aloud to students, I know that one retains very little of the written material that one reads aloud because one’s focus is entirely upon inflection and how articulate the reading sounds to others.  With all of that on your mind, it is very difficult to remember what you have read, what content you have just shared on the airwaves for others.

That said, we must suppose that there is some merit in being able to read aloud and that this part of the test quantifies that merit.  Next the child is directed to raise questions about the test and extract three of its main points, writing their responses on page 2 of this packet of papers that constitutes the child’s responses. ((They are not allowed to look at the book for these reflections, so whatever they have retained from reading aloud is their sole source of information on these questions.)

Once done with this exercise in recall, the child is instructed to bring that page to the teacher and then to go off and read the whole book—maybe about 6-8 pages of text with a few nice pictures.  Following that there is a page of comprehension questions and then a page of “metacognitive” questions to see if the child can think about their own thinking about the text.

And this is all for those children who are not “proficient” readers at their respective grade levels.

Katy told me that the test requires about 1 hour for most children and that it exhausts them.  I would call it “an exhaustive test.”

If I were to administer this 1-hour test to each of the 15 students of mine who are not proficient, based on the average instructional time I am calculating for each day at 5 hours, it would take three full school days to administer the tests.

If you think of each instructional hour as a right to education for each student in my class of 30, then three days is lost for each of 30 children (and in instructional hours it is a loss of 3 X 5 X 30 students or 450 hours of potential instructional time lost to this DRA reading assessment!)

Only I know this, of course, and so I must in good conscience make other arrangements.  I have written a letter to the 15 parents whose children I have been asked to test and requested that they come to school on the “no student” day tomorrow, which was set aside for grading the Benchmark tests and other assessments so that I can test their children without compromising the instructional time I have with all the students in the class.  Of course that arrangement is possible only because I have spent 6 hours at home grading the math and reading Benchmark tests instead of waiting and using the day set aside for such grading.

It is also important to remember that this DRA assessment is being given to those children who are not proficient on any one of two other tests—the CSAP tests of last spring and/or the Benchmark tests of last week.  In most cases, the child has failed to show proficiency on both those tests.  So now I will find out more exactly just how behind they are?

One of my sixth graders was elated when she didn’t receive my letter about coming in for the reading assessment.  Unfortunately, it was because I didn’t think sixth graders were in the group that needed further testing. Today I sent the letter to her parents home in a sealed envelope so she wouldn’t have to show her disappointment in front of peers.

What are we doing to these children’s morale?  To their self-confidence and self-esteem?  Could it possibly be worth it?  What more could we learn by testing them again to exhaustion on material that is so challenging and difficult for them?  WHAT are we proving?  What are they learning about reading?