DORA – Reading With Ms. Joy

Diagnostic Online Reading Assessment Tool (DORA)

DORA IS A K-12 WEB-BASED ASSESSMENT

DORA is a K- 12 web-based assessment that diagnostically evaluates students’ Foundational Reading Skills.

Affordable Pricing
Easy Administration
Detailed Prescriptive Reports

A diagnostic assessment in literacy is an excellent choice for parents who worry that their child’s literacy development may lag behind their peers. DORA is a comprehensive, valid, and reliable web-based assessment tool that diagnostically assesses students’ reading abilities. DORA adapts to students as they respond to each question in the online program, getting harder or easier as needed to complete the diagnosis. DORA is aligned to Common Core and other state standards, but they do not limit items they give students based on their grade level, like other tests that are standards-focused. As a result, DORA is diagnostic but is not “diagnostic” relative to a student’s grade level and this can be misleading, especially because in case of a student’s weak cognitive skills or processing speed, their instructional zone may not be close to grade level.

DORA compared to other types of assessments, such as iReady, STAR, or MAP-ELA.

DORA is essentially a multiple-measure diagnostic assessment, designed to explain why a student is struggling or doing well, rather than simply to measure summative assessment outcomes. So if DORA says a student is at grade level 1.17 in phonics, you also know that the student is working on short vowels. Scores are tied to specific skills and concepts, unlike in other assessments that focus on providing data for school administrators, who mainly want data for accountability purposes. The best way to evaluate and compare is to look at sample reports from each of these assessments. One other item that separates DORA from other assessments is that DORA is a series of tests.

DORA’s interactive style makes testing fun and engages students. By examining multiple reading measures together, DORA reveals a student’s unique reading profile and offers a comprehensive report for parents and teachers.

How does DORA separate out phonics abilities in students who have very strong word knowledge already?

Especially with older students, word recognition skills may be very high. DORA assesses each phonics principle or skill in a sequential scope and sequence in a set of 10 questions. Within each set, half of the target words are nonsense words. By using this strategy, DORA can determine whether students actually understand each phonics principle. A breakout of types of errors is also provided. As you would guess, for older students with phonics weaknesses, it is often the case that 100% of their errors are with non-words.
DORA breaks decoding out into multiple sub-tests. Students who are successful in decoding need to be able to use skills in sight words or high-frequency words, phonics, phonemic awareness, and even spelling. All of these areas are tested to give insight into your child's diverse set of skills and strategies when encountering unknown words.

Measures eight essential subskills of reading

Reveals a student's unique reading profile across multiple areas

Aligned to Common Core, TEKS, and other state standards

Engaging interactive technology features a combination of audio, text, and multimedia images

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Diagnostic Online Reading Assessment Tool (DORA)

DORA IS A K-12 WEB-BASED ASSESSMENT

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