Let's Talk About ORF

"Given the fact that there's never enough time in classrooms for the instruction, which is the most important thing we do, instruction and intervention, I want to be very cautious about how much time is being spent on data collection."  ~Dr. Jan Hasbrouck 

When you visit your doctor, the initial part of the visit is usually a series of screeners: temperature, blood pressure, pulse, etc.  These measures are relatively quick and give an indication of any health issues you may be having.  Let's say, for example, that you register a fever.  Your doctor will not diagnose you with a fever and send you home.  Typically, they will look deeper through observation, discussion, and diagnostic testing to find the underlying cause of your temperature.  If we use this analogy to look at literacy assessment and instruction, taking your temperature is very similar to the role that Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) assessments play.

ORF assessments were developed in the mid 1980s, with Hasbrouck & Tindal completing research on their first ORF normed assessment in the late 1980s and publishing it in 1992.  Since then they have updated their norms in 2006 and again in 2017 (see below).  Dr. Jan Hasbrouck has admitted to being skeptical of the assessment when first learning about it from Gerald Tindal.  Her initial response was very similar to my own, namely, how can a one minute cold read possibly be enough to really tell us anything about a student's reading?  I personally struggled with this for years and it was through listening to and reading Dr. Hasbrouck's work that I finally fully wrapped my head around the beauty of this simple assessment.

Hasbrouck & Tindal's 2017 ORF Norms

First, I think it is essential to understand that ORF assessment scores are not in and of themselves important.  Rather, it is what they could indicate that is important.  To continue with the medical analogy, students who score below the 50th percentile on the Hasbrouck & Tindal ORF norms could be considered as having an "academic fever." Our job is to dig deeper and figure out what's causing that fever through diagnostic assessments and informal screeners.  We can again refer to Scarborough's Reading Rope when thinking about this.  Students who can read but are performing below the 50th percentile on ORF assessments often have strands of the reading rope that are loosely woven together. It is only when we help students tighten these strands that they will develop into skilled, proficient readers.

Scarborough's Reading Rope

So, what's next when we have a student scoring below the 50th percentile? This is when we use informal screeners and diagnostic assessments to look at the Word Recognition and Language Comprehension strands of the Rope.  Most frequently, it is holes in skills from the Word Recognition section of the Rope that are the root issue.  Weakness with sight word recognition, phonics skills, and phonemic awareness are common among these students.  Also, vocabulary skills can play a role because if a student knows the function and meaning of a word, it makes it easier for them to turn the word into a sight word (It is important to note here that the term sight word means any word that is recognized instantly, whether it is phonetically regular or irregular, and it is based on the process of orthographically mapping that word for immediate retrieval).  I have developed a document called ORF Assessment: Next Steps to help guide you through this process (see below).

ORF Assessment: Next Steps

The danger of ORF assessments is when they are misused.  Some mistakenly use it as a diagnostic assessment and treat students with low ORF scores through fluency interventions meant to build their reading rate.  This is flawed for two reasons: one, it fails to look deeper at underlying skill deficiencies and two, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the term "fluency." It is important to remember that true fluency is more complex and includes not just rate but also expression, prosody, and it is connected to comprehension.  Hasbrouck herself has said that she wishes she could rename the assessment since it is truly automaticity that it is looking at, not fluency.  She now refers to it as Correct Words Per Minute (CWPM). 

Tim Shanahan has made the case for daily reading fluency practice as part of how to schedule your literacy instruction.  This can look different depending on where students are at in their literacy development.  For students just beginning school, this could be work at the sound and letter level.  Novice readers (typically late kindergarten to first grade) often complete fluency practice with decodable texts.  Both of these beginning levels need to complete this practice with a teacher or in peer groups in order to gain the practice they need and get immediate feedback.  As students move on to "break the code" and enter what Ehri refers to as the consolidated phase of reading, they are able to move into more varied text and can benefit from independent reading at this point.

Finally, I'd like to make the case for yearly ORF assessments being completed through high school with students.  The beauty of this assessment is its speed.  It is incredibly quick to administer which saves important instructional time at the elementary level.  But, as students move on into middle school and high school, it is too often taken for granted that they are proficient readers.  Students who receive services through an IEP are often supported in completing their classwork but do not receive the remediation they need to actually become proficient readers.  Results of the 2019 NAEP Assessment of 12th graders (it was not completed with 12th graders in 2022) show that 30 percent of 12th graders are reading at below basic levels.  While we often focus on elementary students because we know we can have the biggest impact through providing early intervention, we cannot simply discount these older students.  Completing yearly ORF assessments on students of all ages would assure that we would not let students slip through the cracks.  We owe it to our students to assure that earning a high school diploma means you have proficient reading skills.  There are many other requirements necessary to earn a high school diploma that meets NH's minimum state standards... why would proficient reading skills not be one of them?

National 2019 grade 12 NAEP Reading Scores (was not given in 2022)