Curriculum-Based Measurement of Oral Reading Fluency: A Confirmatory Analysis of its Relation to Reading

Abstract

Reading traditionally is characterized as having two major components, decoding and comprehension. Published reading tests are created using these two components. Reading fluency, a combination of reading speed and accuracy, typically is not measured. Attention to reading fluency has increased through the emerging literature on Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM), which employs standardized oral reading tests derived from basal readers to make decisions about students' general reading skills. Despite a series of published validation studies, questions about what CBM oral reading fluency measures persist. This study examined the relation of CBM oral reading fluency to the reading process from a theoretical perspective. Reading models were tested using confirmatory factor analysis procedures with 114 third-and 124 fifth-grade students. Subjects were tested on tasks requiring decoding of phonetically regular words and regular nonsense words, literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, cloze items, written retell, and CBM oral reading fluency. For third graders, a unitary model of reading was validated with all measures contributing significantly. For fifth graders, a two-factor model was validated paralleling current conceptions of reading measurement. Regardless of the factor model employed, CBM oral reading fluency provided a good index of reading proficiency, including comprehension.