1. M E M O R A N D U M

FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
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STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
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John L. Winn
Commissioner of Education
F. PHILIP HANDY,
Chairman
T. WILLARD FAIR,
Vice Chairman
Members
DONNA G. CALLAWAY
ROBERTO MARTÍNEZ
PHOEBE RAULERSON
KATHLEEN SHANAHAN
LINDA K. TAYLOR
July 7, 2006
M E M O R A N D U M
TO:
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District School Superintendents
K-12
Principals
FROM:
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John L. Winn
Commissioner of Education
SUBJECT:
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Changes to Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN)
In 2003 Florida was one of the very first states to receive funding for its
Reading First
Program.
The grant writing team carefully addressed all the criteria required in the proposal, including
how we would monitor the progress of students in learning to read. At that time, it was the
consensus of the team to require that the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
(DIBELS) be administered four times a year. The rationale was that since more frequent
progress monitoring is considered best practice for struggling readers, and there would likely be
many struggling readers in
Reading First
schools, assessing four times a year would provide
teachers with more information to make important instructional decisions for their students.
Over the past three years, it has become evident that assessing four times a year with DIBELS
has been a challenge for many schools. Managing assessment teams, organizing materials,
scheduling, data entry, and other tasks related to assessment have been taxing for
Reading First
schools’ staff and reading coaches. In addition, the teachers who served on the State Paper
Reduction Task Force recommended that the Department of Education identify ways to ease the
administrative burdens placed on teachers. Therefore, in an effort to ease some of the challenges
related to DIBELS assessments and also to make DIBELS assessments more feasible for many
non-
Reading First
schools, we will be moving to a three-times-per-year model for the 2006-2007
school year.
325 W. GAINES STREET • TALLAHASSEE, FL 32399-0400 • (850) 245-0505 • www.fldoe.org

Memorandum to District Superintendents
Page 2
Reprogramming of the Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN) will begin
immediately in order to serve the new three-times-per-year progress monitoring schedule. In the
very near future Karl Hook, Director of Technical Projects at FCRR, will be contacting PMRN
users about the changes in reporting. The PMRN will no longer accept progress monitoring
scores four times per year.
When you receive the elementary DIBELS assessment order from Sopris West, it will contain
progress monitoring materials for four assessment windows.
The materials for Assessment 2
will not be used for benchmark testing. All Assessment 2 materials are to be destroyed in
order to prevent accidental use
. The Assessment 3 materials will be used for the middle
(winter) assessment, and Assessment 4 materials will be used for end of the year (spring). The
three data collection windows will occur between the instructional days 20-29, 95-104, and 155-
169.
If your district uses the Florida Oral Reading Fluency (FORF) measure for middle school, please
note that it will be administered three times per year, and the windows will be exactly the same
as those for DIBELS (see previous paragraph).
It is important to remember that all schools intending to utilize the PMRN for the 2006-2007
school year must register. This includes schools that are only using the Coach’s Log function.
The registration form is linked from http://www.fcrr.org/pmrn. Registration has been extended
through July 14, 2006, to accommodate the change in functionality.
We hope that by moving to a three-times-per-year schedule for benchmark progress monitoring,
we will increase the efficiency of our assessment efforts and free time for other activities related
to coaching and instruction. The goal of our collaborative effort is to teach all students to
become successful and confident readers. Thank you for all you do to support reading in the
state of Florida!
JLW/elv

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