Further evidence for the reliability and validity of a curriculum-based measure of oral reading fluency

Over the course of two decades of research, 1774 students were assessed using a curriculum-based measure of oral reading fluency (the Wheldall Assessment of Reading Passages, or WARP) and on several other established measures of reading and reading-related skills. The full sample comprised 501 typical readers from Years 2 to 6 and 1273 low-progress readers in Years 2 to 6 attending intensive literacy intervention programs. Data presented here show that WARP scores were strongly correlated with text reading accuracy, word reading accuracy and spelling, while they were moderately correlated with nonword reading accuracy and reading comprehension, and less strongly correlated with receptive vocabulary. WARP scores were also strongly correlated with scores from the same students who were assessed three, six and/or nine months after the original testing time point. These results indicate that the WARP has excellent criterion validity and test-retest reliability.