The power of teacher-administered assessment in a changing landscape
With the unexpected and unprecedented transition to online teaching due to COVID-19, gathering reliable student data will be critical. Whether you’re virtual or back in physical classrooms, observing your readers will be more important than ever to help you understand what they need.
When educators observe and document the behaviors of students as they read, they can gather data granular enough to determine not only risk, but also specific instructional needs.

The advantages of teacher-administered assessment
Teacher-administered assessment provides a more genuine and valid experience than placing them in front of a computer screen.
Watch the following videos to hear an educator describe some of the critical advantages of teacher-administered assessment over computer-based, online assessment for early readers.
Measure critical skill development through direct observation
When assessing early literacy skills, it’s critical to hear students produce sounds and words. With the right tools in place, educators can spend the quality one-on-one time that young learners need so they are carefully, closely observed as they’re learning to read.
Listen to readers read
A teacher’s eyes and ears deliver the most reliable results for young students and prevent beginning readers from simply clicking through assessments. Observation also helps educators choose the right of differentiated instruction for each student.
Gather authentic, meaningful data
It’s especially important for teachers supporting struggling readers to understand exactly where and how a student is struggling. That information—the artifact of a shared experience with a student—comes from directly observing a student reading. Our formative assessment tool gathers information that determines student risk and instructional needs related to literacy.
Teacher-administered assessment with mCLASS®
Teachers need to focus on teaching. We help you spend less time on assessment.
mCLASS’s K–6 teacher-administered DIBELS® 8th Edition assessment provides for streamlined data collection, emphasizing measures of the most important skills in each and every student, no matter where they are.
Watch an mCLASS overview

Everything educators need, in one tool
mCLASS’s integrated literacy system includes efficient one-minute measures, a built-in dyslexia screener, teacher-led and student-driven instruction, intervention, and robust reports for educators.
See it in action
Watch students segment words into individual sounds to demonstrate phonemic awareness while mCLASS automates the assessment and provides targeted, explicit instruction.
Assessing remotely with DIBELS 8th Edition
mCLASS offers guidance on how to assess one-on-one in a remote setting. It’s more important than ever to enable teachers to continue to have a personal window into their students’ foundational reading development, and mCLASS allows teachers to mark which assessments were conducted remotely versus face-to-face.
Online measures
With remote learning, it may not always be possible to assess every student one on one. The Text Reading Online measure uses state-of-the-art speech recognition to measure fluency and comprehension in Grades 1–6, giving teachers a back-up assessment they can use with older or advanced students.
Maintain fidelity no matter the learning environment.
In addition to above, mCLASS has created a collection of additional resources to help educators assess effectively no matter the scenario.
Learn more
