SPED 311 Assessment Review Project

Name: Carley Rector

Date: April 23, 2015
School/Setting:
How does this project contribute to your knowledge about assessment?
I was apprehensive going into this project. This was my first time
being exposed to formal assessments of this nature and I was worried
it would go over my head. Once I dove into the examiners manual, I
realized that the task wasnt as daunting as I originally thought. The
manual was a great source of information and I found everything I
needed quickly. The journal articles helped to clarify any questions I
had. I now realize that within a few hours I can become very familiar
with almost any assessment. I feel more confident going into the field
of special education and talking with the schools psychologists about
formal assessments.

On my honor, as an Aggie, I have neither given nor

received unauthorized aid on this academic work.
Signature____________________________________________

Practical Evaluation
Basic Information
The Gray Oral Reading Test is an examination that measures
students reading ability. Pro-Ed published the 5th edition in 2012, which
was written by J. Lee Wiederhold and Brian R. Bryant. There are four
main purposes of this test; to identify students who are below level in
oral reading and determine their degree of their difficulty, identify
students oral reading strengths and weaknesses, monitor students
progress, and finally, this test is used for conducting research. The test
measures four key oral reading skills for students. These skills include
rate, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The GORT 5 can be
administered to students 6 years 0 months to 23 years 11 months. This
exam costs $275 and additional examiner record booklets can be
purchased for $59.
Manuals- technical information
The examiner manual for this exam provides examiners with
general test information, the administration directions and scoring
directions, and several conversion charts to convert raw scores to sub
test standard scores. The manual is thin and easy to follow. The
examiners manual contains all of the necessary information but no
more than necessary. The entire exam is as succinct as possible while
still maintaining effectiveness. The examiner manual is no exception.
The beginning of the manual has several pages on norms, reliability,

and validity. I appreciated that the manual was laid out in a manner,
which makes it easy to find whatever you were looking for. An
examiner would not have to spend copious amounts of time searching
for the answer to their question due to the lack of extraneous
information.
Materials
This test comes in a sturdy, yet compact, box. Inside, the
examiner is provided with an examiner manual, student book, and 25
examiner booklets for both forms A & B. The examiner would need to
provide his/her own timer for test administration. The student book is
flimsy and each form (A and B) contains 16 passages, which increase
in difficulty with each passage. There are no pictures in any of the
passages. For the early passages, I believe pictures would be
beneficial. This would assist young children in getting an idea of what
the short story is about and would make the test more interesting. I
think it would increase student engagement and may lead to higher
scores. I know a common technique taught in elementary school is to
look at the pictures for clues. One simple picture (even a black and
white figure drawing) would benefit the younger students. The font
was large for the first 10 or so passages, but as the length of passages
increased, the font decreased. Some of the last passages were typed in
a font that may be challenging to read from across a table. The record
booklet is a paper packet stapled together. The booklet is easy to

follow and provides adequate space to record answers. Overall, I think

the materials for this exam are suitable. I believe examiners would
enjoy not having to lug around a huge box and would appreciate the
easy to follow set up.
Protocols

The Gray Oral Reading Test lasts from 15-45 minutes. Qualified
examiners include teachers, school psychologists, and diagnosticians.
The test begins with the examiner reading short instructions informing
the student to read quickly and accurately. The directions are short and
easy to follow. Then, depending on their grade level and basal (9 or 10
for two consecutive passages), the students are presented with a short
story, which varies in length depending on the level. The student reads
the passage aloud as the examiner times and records deviation from
print. Once the student finishes reading the passage, the student book
is removed and the examiner asks 5 comprehension questions. The
student responds to the questions orally, without referring back to the
passage. The questions are then scored 1 for correct or 0 for incorrect
and the examiner records the scores in the record booklet. The 5th
edition has updated the questions to where a student must read the
passage in order to answer the question. In previous editions, students
could rely on background knowledge to infer answers, thus providing
an inaccurate score. After answering the questions, the examiner

continues with a new passage until the student reaches their ceiling: a
score of 2 or lower on the comprehension questions for two
consecutive stories. The testing protocols are easy to adhere to and
overall the test is an easy one to administer.
The scoring of this exam does get a little bit complicated. Every
score requires some conversion to find the overall score. Hall and
Tannebaum outline the process of scoring students in a clear and
succinct manner in their journal article. They explain raw scores are
recorded in four different subsets; rate, accuracy, fluency, and
comprehension. The fluency (combination of rate and accuracy scores)
and comprehension scores are combined to find the Oral Reading
Index. There are charts provided in the examiner manual to assist
score conversions. Each passage must be scored before moving onto
the passage to ensure that the student has not reached their ceiling.
Complaints have been voiced over the subjective scoring in the
comprehension questions. Students answer an open-ended question
and their answer must match the one provided in the manual. Some
scorers are more lenient than others; ere go a discrepancy in scores. I
disagree with this accusation due to high interrater reliability scores.
Test Items- content in which students are being tested (i.e.
verbs)
The test items in this exam are short and simple. As previously
stated, there are 16 passages that increase with difficulty as the

student progresses. Each passage is followed by 5 oral comprehension

questions. Students provide the answer and the examiner records if
they got the question right or wrong. This continues until the student
reaches their ceiling or they finish all 16 passages. This test measures
students reading rate, fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. The
questions that follow each passage evaluate if the student truly
comprehends what happened in the story. As previously stated, the 5th
edition calls for the students to thoroughly read the entire passage to
answer each question. The questions in this test accurately assess
students comprehension of the passages. The exam has very high
content-description validity and it is widely accepted as an appropriate
measure of comprehension.
Technical Evaluation
Norms
This test is for children and young adults between the ages of 6
years 0 months to 23 years 11 months. The normative sample tested
2,556 students in 33 states with representatives from all 4 regions,
including Texas. This test was written in Austin, and sample of students
includes many from the state. I believe that Texas was more that well
represented in these norms. There were two testing sites in different
parts of the state, Austin and Dallas. The GORT 5 is found to be
representative of gender, race, religion, parental education level, and
income. This is based off of the 2010 US Bureau of Censes Data. This

normative sample was based off of 51% males and 49% females. The
only race that seemed to be underrepresented was the Hispanic
ethnicity. Hispanic students were lumped in with the 1% other
category. For our purposes in Texas, that is a shame. Many of our
students are Hispanic and I would have liked to see this race
represented in proportion to our population. English Language Learners
were not represented at all so I would not say this is an appropriate
test to administer to ELLs. Students with disabilities were included in
this sampling as long as they were enrolled in a general education
classroom. Students with exceptionality made up less than 1% of the
sample population and they were not provided with any testing
modifications. Though they were included, this does not properly
reflect a variety of students with disabilities and their achievement.
Overall, the test reflected the general population well, with the
exception of students with disabilities, Hispanic students, and English
Language Learners. For our purpose here in Texas, many of our
students fit into all three of these categories. This does not mean that
the test cannot properly assess their abilities, they were just not
properly represented in the normative sample.
Reliability- kind, interrator and internal consistency
The GORT 5 is a very reliable test with the coefficient alpha
exceeding .90 for all ages. The correlation between test forms A and B
is .85 or higher, test-retest reliability is .85-.95, and interrator reliability

is above .94. The interrater reliability seems very high, but the
examiners giving the sample tests are highly trained, compared to
those who may administer normally. These measures of reliability were
obtained through observing test scores administered by trained
professionals. This may not be the strongest reflection of the true
reliability. These scores are a substantial increase from previous
editions of the Gray Oral Reading Test. A focus on the 5th revision was
to improve the normative sample and all aspects of reliability.
Reliability between .8 and .9 is desirable, with the goal being around
the .9 range. After examining the data, it is clear that this test falls
within the acceptable range and is considered a reliable measure of
students reading rate, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension skills.
Validity- find concurrent validity
The GORT 5 is accredited as a valid test. The constructidentification validity is deemed a moderate to large correlation in
cognitive ability and a large correlation academic achievement. In
essence, this test correlates well with related traits and skills. The
criterion-prediction validity is highly correlated, greater than .7. This
means the test relates strongly to other tests that measure reading
ability. The content-description validity is considered valid. Contentdescription validity looks to see if the test truly measures all aspects of
oral reading ability.
Professional

Journal Article
Test Review by Anna H. Hall and Rory P. Tannebaum reviews
the fifth edition of the Gray Oral Reading Test. This journal article was
published in 2012 in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment. This
article outlines the GORT 5 and provides commentary and
recommendations. The article summarizes the norms, validity, and
reliability that are found in the examiners manual. Hall and Tannebaum
discuss the test materials, administration of the test itself, and
scoring/interpretation of the scores. The article took the key
information presented in the examiners manual and simplified it into
laymans terms. Hall and Tannebaum recommend that those giving this
exam should practice administering and scoring on multiple children.
They argue this will help prevent miscue recording methods and errors
with timing. Hall and Tannebaum also note that this test is most
beneficial for a diagnosis in conjunction with parent interviews, formal
observations, and when administered by a trained professional. This
article was extremely helpful and I would recommend it to those
administering the test. If I knew a teacher who was administering the
GORT and did not have a lot of experience with tests of this nature, I
would send the article their way. It summarized all of the key points
and made me feel confident in this exam.
MMY

Nancy Crumpton reviewed the Gray Oral Reading Test 4th edition
for the Mental Measurement Yearbook. Crumpton works for the
College of Education for Troy State University Montgomery. In her
review she outlined the purpose of the GORT, the norms, reliability,
validity, extensively covered the changes made from the first Gray Oral
Reading Test, and summarized the testing procedures. The GORT 5 was
released in 2012 and the Mental Measurement Yearbook has yet to
produce a review for the latest edition. Some of the data was
outmoded, but the procedures and purpose of this test has remained
the same since 1963. Crumptons comparisons of the different version
of the GORT highlighted the progress made in our testing abilities over
the last several decades. The GORT 4 was leaps and bounds more
reliable and valid than the original exam. Having knowledge of the
GORT 5, I can honestly say the exam has only improved. One notable
improvement was the normative sample. The 4th edition sampled 1,677
students across the four regions, almost half the amount sampled in
the 5th edition. Crumptons article brought to light the amount of effort
writers of the GORT have poured into this exam for the last 50 plus
years. This article instilled more confidence in me that this exam is
truly a reliable and accurate measure of a students reading abilities. It
has been used and proved for over half a century and I have faith that
it will continue to be a strong test for many years to come.
Citations

Crumpton, N. (2003). [Gray Oral Reading Test.]. In The fifteenth mental

measurement
yearbook. Available from
http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=9c931b186211-4a28bd61a472bb27b5e3%40sessionmgr111&vid=2&hid=107&bdata
=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mmt&AN=test.2302
Hall, A. H., & Tannebaum, R. P. (2013). Test Review: J. L. Wiederholt
& B. R.
Bryant. (2012). Gray Oral Reading Tests-Fifth Edition (GORT-5).
Austin, TX:
Pro-Ed. Journal Of Psychoeducational Assessment, 31(5), 516520.
Wiederholt, J. L., & Bryant, B. R. (2012). Gray Oral Reading Tests, Fifth
Edition.