measures of pre-reading skills like phonemic awareness and phonics. For example, EGRA includes timed, one-minute assessments of letter recognition, nonsense and familiar words, and paragraph reading. Additional (untimed) segments include comprehension, relationship to print, and dictation (RTI International, 2008). The DIBELS include two measures of Phonological Awareness: Initial Sounds Fluency (ISF), and Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF). ISF assesses a child's skill to identify and produce the initial sound of a given word, while PSF assesses a child's skill to produce the individual sounds within a given word. Alphabetic understanding is evaluated with the Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) (University of Oregon, 2005). Oral tests do differ on how they measure comprehension of the passage read. For instance, EGRA uses factual (literal) question-answering, while DIBELS uses a Retell Fluency scale (Hudson, Lane, & Pullen, 2005).

In most cases, concurrent and predictive validity is assessed using a variety of other standardized reading assessments such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills- ITBS, California Achievement Test - CAT, Stanford Achievement Test - SAT, Colorado Student Assessment Program - CSAP, etc. (The Psychological Corporation, 2003; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999; University of Oregon, 2005; Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001; Williams, 2001).

# **_d. Correlations between reading fluency and “pencil-and-paper” comprehension measures_**

International research has demonstrated once again that measures of fluency and written comprehension are correlated (Abadzi, 2006; Crouch, 2006; Samuels, 2002). Deno et al (1980) found significant correlations between written comprehension and oral reading in three separate studies with regular students and students with reading disabilities (resource students). The first study was done with a sample of 18 regular students and 15 resource students, correlations between oral reading and comprehension correct rate of response were .67 for regular students and .82 for resource students. The second study was done with 27 regular students and 18 with reading disabilities, correlations between word meaning and oral reading were .49 to .57 for the regular students and 0.66 to 0.71 for resource students, depending on whether oral reading lasted 30 or 60 seconds. The third study was done with 43 regular students and 23 resource students. For regular students, the correlation between oral reading and SAT literal comprehension was .73, and .74 with inferential comprehension; for resource students, correlations were .7 and .67 respectively.

Fuchs, Fuchs, and Maxwell (1988, cited in Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001), found a correlation of .91 between reading fluency and comprehension in the SAT in a sample of 70 students with reading disabilities. Reading fluency also correlated highly with other measures of reading abilities. The authors concluded that oral reading fluency could be considered as an indicator of overall reading competence.

Shaw and Shaw (2002), found similar results for the relationship between oral fluency (measured with the DIBELS) and written comprehension (measured with the reading scale of the CSAP). In a sample of 52 students, the authors found significant, positive and strong correlations between scores in the CSAP, taken in the spring, and oral fluency measures taken in the fall, winter and spring. Coefficients ranged between .8 and .93, which led the authors to conclude that DIBELS is a strong predictor of reading performance in the CSAP (Shaw & Shaw, 2002).

Likewise, Wood (2005) found significant correlations between oral reading fluency and curriculum-based tests. Results reveal high percentages of variance in the latter accounted for fluency in first, third, and eighth grades, ranging from 89 percent to 69 percent (Wood, Hill, 13