I just love No Child Left Behind…I don’t think so! Giving a 4 year old homework and learning DIBELS! How about reading some real books to kids! How about teaching them the joy of learning instead of mandating a test and becoming thoughtless drones with no critical skill-set? Homeschooling is looking really good right now!
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April 9, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I work for Sopris West, the publisher of DIBELS. Nothing about DIBELS precludes “reading some real books to kids” or “teaching them the joy of learning.” In fact, the authors of DIBELS would absolutely encourage exactly that sort of instruction and more.
DIBELS is simply a 5-7 minute screening assessment administered 3 times a year (K-3 and as high as 6) to help teachers pinpoint students likely to struggle without intervention.
One doesn’t “learn DIBELS,” one learns to read. DIBELS is a tool to help in that endeavor.
April 9, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I appreciate your comment/clarification and thank you for writing.
As a person who believes in a slower-paced form of education (i.e. in a child’s own time, rather to possibly push one to read before they are ready), I do not believe that DIBELS is fully the way to go in determining a child’s reading and comprehension abilities. Of course I am sure there are other ways that might be included in determining the overall outcome. But in recent years it has appeared to me that the children are being taught how to take a test and not being taught to learn, and listen. Very young children are dependent of two-way oral stimulus (i.e. storytelling, finger plays, talking with them in a normal voice and not in nonsensical baby sounds. Television viewing for children only provide one-way stimulus and therefore not beneficial). Once they acquire the listening skills, then they are ready to learn their letters visually and integrate the sounds. But as you know, this is simply the belief of one parent. May I propose what I believe is a fair article showing both sides of opinion for our readers? Again, thank you.
April 11, 2008 at 12:32 am
I’ve never heard of DIBELS before. However, I do believe in public schools when you have 25 or more kids in a classroom you need a standardized way to tell how all those kids are doing. It’s impossible to have meaningful 1-on-1 with every student today. As long as the assessment is objective rather than subjective, it should be fair. Also I don’t believe in teaching to the test which is a common but unacknowledged strategy in some schools. This would be a test of the teacher rather than a true test of the students. We need to find out why our schools are failing the students before finding out why students are failing school. Throwing money and tests at the problem isn’t helping.
NCLB (among other problems) doesn’t seem to take into account that people naturally learn at different paces. Some are naturally slower at 3rd grade but fine by 5th or even the next year. Plus not everyone learns the same style so what helps one student may not another. There is no magic bullet when it comes to education.