**Table 1.NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Scale, Grade 4: 2002**

|**Fluent**|**Level 4**<br>**Level 3**|Reads primarily in larger, meaningful phrase groups. Although some<br>regressions, repetitions, and deviations from text may be present, these do not<br>appear to detract from the overall structure of the story. Preservation of the<br>author’s syntax is consistent. Some or most of the story is read with expressive<br>interpretation.<br>Reads primarily in three- or four-word phrase groups. Some small groupings<br>may be present. However, the majority of phrasing seems appropriate and<br>preserves the syntax of the author. Little or no expressive interpretation is<br>present.|
|---|---|---|
|**Non fluent**|**Level 2**|Reads primarily in two-word phrases with some three- or four-word groupings.<br>Some word-by-word reading may be present. Word groupings may seem<br>awkward and unrelated to larger context of sentence or passage.|
||**Level 1**|Reads primarily word-by-word. Occasional two-word or three-word phrases<br>may occur—but these are infrequent and/or they do not preserve meaningful<br>syntax.|

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2002 Oral Reading Study Finally, _reading comprehension_ is the most common measure of reading performance, and yet, comprehension assessment is somewhat a controversial topic, in that no general agreement exists on how to do it best (Hess, 2006). _Question answering_ is a widely used reading comprehension assessment in classrooms, and it is incorporated frequently within standardized tests. For each passage read, students provide answers to short-answer questions, which could be literal (factual questions about the text), inferential (making logical connections among facts in text or drawing from ideas implicit in the text), or critical (using analysis or making value judgments about what was read). Comprehension can also be tested with _passage recall_ , a well-established method that requires students to retell the story in their own words after reading it. Some authors suggest putting a time limit to this process, such as four or five minutes (Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001; Wren, 2004). A third type of comprehension measure involves the student filling in missing words from a passage. This technique, created by Taylor (1953), is widely known as _cloze_ or maze. Finally, a recent innovation asks students to read sentences and state whether they make sense or not. A sensible sentence might read, “The man eats the apple.” A nonsense sentence might read, “The chair was hungry.”

# **_b. Silent “pencil-and-paper” measures of reading comprehension_**

Most national and international assessments use pencil-and-paper tests, and almost all comprehensive tests measure reading comprehension. In the United States, some tests that include reading comprehension measures are the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP), the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), and the Stanford Achievement Test -- 10th Edition (SAT-10).

In Peru, the Quality Measurement Unit (Unidad de Medición de la Calidad, UMC) at the MINEDU has carried out a series of survey-based national assessments in various subject areas and grades, including reading. In 2006, it established a universal assessment system to document the 2nd grade reading performance of each child and school. Although the first ECE (for its 11