Any good test should be reliable, and as the Curmudgeon could tell you, that means something very specific in research terms. In lay terms it means that you get pretty much the same results every time you administer the test. In statistical terms it's nice to see a reliability coeficient close to 1.0, but certainly above .90. There are two ways of reading this the test is not reliable and therefore not trustworthy. Children differ in their phonemic abilities, in their ability to recognize words automatically, in their ability to comprehend and learn from text, and in their motivation and appreciation of literature.
Different methods are appropriate for different goals.
For example, approaches that involve children in reading books of their own choice are important to develop motivated readers. But whole language approaches, which rely on children to choose the materials they read, tend not to be as effective as more teacher-directed approaches for developing children's word recognition or comprehension. Finally, Stahl returns to the question of why teachers seem to like the concept of learning styles and workshops that they attend. This is, as he notes, important, but ultimately has nothing to do with learning styles. This site is using the Hazard Area Revisited theme.