initials in Spanish: “Evaluación Censal Escolar”) assessment was organized on a very tight timeline, it reached around 55 percent of the target. The ECE-2007 showed great progress in terms of coverage, reaching over 90 percent of the target, and included a test on math reasoning. The ECE provides a critical starting point for benchmarking the performance of specific schools against others in their region and nationwide.

ECE tests are formulated based on the National Curricular Design (DCN), taking into account the learning achievements expected for the end of second grade in the area of integral communication. Because all DCN’s goals for second grade on integral communication refer to reading comprehension, the test has focused exclusively on this skill.

The test follows a multiple-choice format, with three alternative answers to choose from, and questions have different degrees of difficulty: word comprehension, sentence comprehension, and connected-text comprehension with literal and inferential questions. Each question provides information on the development of the pertinent abilities and allows the identification of the reading tasks that the students master. The MINEDU defines “reading tasks” as the cognitive processes students use to understand a written text. This includes identifying the main event in written news, recognizing the sequence of facts in a story, and so on.

The ECE classifies second grade students into four groups based on three specific attainment levels (0, 1, 2 and 3) with clear, meanings. A student in the Group 0 cannot read and comprehend even the simplest sentence. Reaching attainment Level 1 supposes the ability to read and comprehend a simple sentence. Level 2 means that the child can read a more complex paragraph but without full comprehension. By the end of second grade, a child should reach Level 3: the ability to read and fully comprehend a more complex paragraph. The levels of performance established for the ECE are inclusive. That is, the students that reached Level 3 are highly likely to be able to perform all reading tasks of this level plus those corresponding to the previous levels. The definition of meaningful performance levels can only be done by transforming scores using the Rasch model or a similar approach (MINEDU-UMC, 2007).

# **_c. Oral measures of reading fluency_**

More than 25 years of research support the use of oral reading assessments as highly reliable and valid measures of general reading achievement, including comprehension, for most students.<sup>7</sup> Oral reading assessments are designed to be inexpensive, quick measures to regularly monitor the development of pre-reading and early reading skills. They are mostly used by teachers to track individual student progress in reading, and identify students that require additional support.

All oral assessments require one-to-one administration. They can be done by teachers themselves and take between 10 to 15 minutes per student (RTI International, 2008; University of Oregon, 2005). Known examples of oral assessments are the AIMSweb Standard Reading Assessment Passages (also available in Spanish); the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), the Developmental Reading Assessment K-3 - 2nd Edition (DRA-2, K-3), the Early Reading Diagnostic Assessment (ERDA), and the Early-Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA). Most of them have been field tested only in the USA, but EGRA has been piloted in twelve languages and six countries, including Peru (RTI International, 2008).

All these tests measure oral reading fluency (hereafter, fluency or reading fluency) the same way (by counting the number of words read correctly from a passage in one minute), and all include

> 7 See Shinn & Shinn (2002) for a useful summary of validity studies since 1981 and Hosp (2001) for a comprehensive review of correlational studies as early as 1981.

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