DIBELS Series

DIBELS ® (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of literacy skills. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures that can be used to regularly detect risk and monitor the development of early literacy and early reading skills in kindergarten through eighth grade. When implemented as recommended, DIBELS results can be used to evaluate individual student development as well as provide grade-level feedback toward validated instructional objectives.

DIBELS assessment resources are mostly free. There are two strands of DIBELS:

• DIBELS 8th Edition, developed and owned by University of Oregon
• Acadience Reading (formerly DIBELS Next), commercial version sold by Acadience Learning

Acadience was founded by some of the original DIBELS authors (who worked at University of Oregon). They would probably argue that their version has a stronger evidence base but DIBELS 8th is a progression based on more recent research and it is free, hence more widely used.

The South Australian Dept of Education collaborated with the University of Oregon team to develop an Australian version of DIBELS 8th. This is available for free here: DIBELS 8th Edition: Australasian Version Materials.

The University of Oregon site is the main reference for more information on DIBELS. There are commercial online testing/data platforms available for both DIBELS 8th and Acadience Reading.