Anonymous wrote:The VALLS is another piece of frustration added to this school year. It takes weeks to administer and we have to do it all again in January and May.

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Anonymous wrote:Is this similar to DIBELS?

It was virginias attempt to make their own Dibels. It measures similar things (RAN, ORF, blending, phoneme segmentation) it is better in a few ways but worse in others. Most notably as teachers we aren’t given bands of “risk” for sub tests, only overall. We have no way of knowing which sub score is weighted in the overall score. We also don’t know if the risk levels or the sub tests will change throughout the year, or if they will stay the same. It seems like we have been given half the information and are trying to make it work.

Why not use DIBELS? It’s free, easy, and is great information to share with parents.

I have no idea. The cynical side of me thinks because it keeps UVA school of education in business when there aren’t many students taking education classes anymore. The idealistic side thinks maybe given a little time, they can make a tool that fills in some of the holes of DIBELS.

Anonymous wrote:Is there somewhere that publishes the ranges for each risk category by grade? I received a score for my kindergartener along with the range of the specific risk level she landed in but no other context.

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone aware of something explaining how raw scores are converted or what any of this means? Like what the actual standards or benchmarks are for each category? If teachers aren't even given this, then how is this supposed to be useful? My advanced child scored at the very bottom of the blue range yet somehow not poorly enough to qualify for any interventions, and my child who can't read and gets special ed services qualifies for some interventions but appears to have scored higher. 🤔 Based on the score reports, there are a ton of variables, but the math isn't mathing for me.

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Anonymous wrote:The moderate risk kids get regular classroom instruction focused on their areas of need. In kindergarten the area of need can be blending CVC words together which is a kindergarten objective for the end of the year. How can a kid know all letters and letter sounds in the fall of kindergarten but be at moderate risk because they aren’t at the end of the year goal yet? No one knows. The VALLS office says it is like medical insurance groups. I say that is a poor model.

I teach K and it seems they have to know several sounds and get a few points in the other coding sections to not be high risk.

I’m in a high MLL school and have 15 high risk/reading plans.

In k my low risk kids are all actively reading. As in you give them a decidable and they get through beginning first grade- end of first grade. No kidding they are low risk- they are already reading. My moderate kids know all letters and sounds (except ch sh th) and encode 8-10 sounds, and are blending beginning and middle sounds, but not ending so they get the entire thing wrong. They can segment over half the words. I am not seeing moderate risk. They will be fine with tier 1 instruction, but VALLS is saying they are in need of intensive work on skills. WHY?

I know. I get it. I’m always used to a lot of EIRI but 15?! And now tracking reading plans.

How does someone provide 30 minutes of extra instruction everyday for 15 kids?

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The moderate risk kids get regular classroom instruction focused on their areas of need. In kindergarten the area of need can be blending CVC words together which is a kindergarten objective for the end of the year. How can a kid know all letters and letter sounds in the fall of kindergarten but be at moderate risk because they aren’t at the end of the year goal yet? No one knows. The VALLS office says it is like medical insurance groups. I say that is a poor model.

I teach K and it seems they have to know several sounds and get a few points in the other coding sections to not be high risk.

I’m in a high MLL school and have 15 high risk/reading plans.

In k my low risk kids are all actively reading. As in you give them a decidable and they get through beginning first grade- end of first grade. No kidding they are low risk- they are already reading. My moderate kids know all letters and sounds (except ch sh th) and encode 8-10 sounds, and are blending beginning and middle sounds, but not ending so they get the entire thing wrong. They can segment over half the words. I am not seeing moderate risk. They will be fine with tier 1 instruction, but VALLS is saying they are in need of intensive work on skills. WHY?

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Anonymous wrote:The moderate risk kids get regular classroom instruction focused on their areas of need. In kindergarten the area of need can be blending CVC words together which is a kindergarten objective for the end of the year. How can a kid know all letters and letter sounds in the fall of kindergarten but be at moderate risk because they aren’t at the end of the year goal yet? No one knows. The VALLS office says it is like medical insurance groups. I say that is a poor model.

I teach K and it seems they have to know several sounds and get a few points in the other coding sections to not be high risk.

I’m in a high MLL school and have 15 high risk/reading plans.

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Anonymous wrote:Both of my children have taken the reading iReady this year. What grades is this for and is it only for children that require intervention (one of mine does, the other does not).

Answered already:
VALLSS is a K-2 screener for reading
iReady is used at 3-6 for reading

Anonymous wrote:FCPS administrator here: Honestly, we have the same question, OP. Yes, we know who we have to create a reading plan for and what instruction to give for the students who scored high risk. But we’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to measure growth across the year. What’s not evident is where kids—high risk, moderate risk, low risk—are supposed to be by the end of the year based on the score they have now. Neither our literacy specialist nor I can tell you what the score ranges will be.

The only score where we can tease out some way to measure growth is the oral reading fluency (ORF). It’s complicated, but it can be done. I can look at any student’s current ORF and determine where the student should be (how many words per minute they should be reading) by the end of the year.