DIBELS Raises Common Core Cut Scores to Show More Students Below Grade Level

Yesterday, I wrote a piece on Fountas and Pinnell. It was clear that the newly identified below grade level readers were not a result of a sudden reading crisis, but a shifting of F & P cut scores.

Rupert Murdoch (who once claimed ed was a $500 billion industry) and happens to own DIBELS, also decided to raise the bar for children. Under the guise of Common Core, the cut scores for DIBELS have been changed. For instance, pre Common Core a 1st grader was expected to read 40-64 words per minute. Under the Common Core, they are now expected to read 69+ words per minute.

There is no money to be made in labeling children as successful, but labeling them failures has continued to fuel the perceived crisis in education and increases profits.

I was in finance before I became a teacher. If someone tried to push this through, they would be laughed right out of the door. Yet, we are making decisions for millions of children with these flawed metrics without giving it a second thought.  Time for a close read…

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Fountas & Pinnell Create More Rigorous Common Core Guided Reading Guidelines

Common Core continues to place greater demands on our youngest students with little to no regard to years of research on child development.

For example, take the Fountas and Pinnell research based guiding reading levels that have stood the test of time. They spent years creating a system that matched students with just right books. They even warned, “…through detailed coding of thousands of readings, showed that when a text is too difficult for the child the process breaks down and the child does not develop inner control of effective actions for processing texts.”

When Common Core was introduced, Fountas and Pinnell decided it was time to put research aside and go against their own advice in order create more rigorous thresholds for their guided reading levels.

For kindergartners in the pre Common Core days, F&P recommended students reach guided reading levels of A-C. With the introduction of Common Core, F& P raised the expectation to A-D.

The shift continued for first graders. Pre Common Core students were expected to reach levels B-I in the past. Now, F&P raised the expectations to C-J for the grade level.

Why would F&P change the criteria after all of these years?  They claim kindergartners are entering school more ready than before.  This claim isn’t based on research, but a hunch that only helps to grow their profits.  The only plausible explanation is that this rigorous shift occurred to generate revenue for the F&P intervention program LLI.  F&P has created  a new crisis in education- they just so happen to sell the cure.  Seems to be the Common Core business model.

While we would never ask less of our children, F&P warned of the risk of placing unrealistic and untested expectations in front of students. Yet, this is what the Common Core manages to do time and time again.  Let’s bring common sense back to classrooms and leave the baseless raising of bars for the playground.