1. Gray Oral Reading Test 5th Edition
Alexis Saperstein and Mary Stewart Anderson
EDSP 5311: Diagnostic and Prescriptive Teaching of Exceptional Children
Dr. Reed
Houston Baptist University

2. Outline History Description of the Test Purpose Relevant Population
Administration and Scoring
Recording and Interpreting
Normative Information
Reliability
Validity
Experiences with Test
Takeaways

3. History Developed by Dr. Willian S. Gray in 1960 (he died)
First published in 1963 after being completed by Dr. Helen Robinson
5th edition published in by Pearson/Psychcorp
Authors: J. Lee Wiederholt and Brian R. Bryant

4. Description of the Test
Consists of examiners manual, student book (form A and form B) that is read aloud.
Form A examiner record booklet (25 come in a set)
Form B examiner record booklet (25 come in a set)

5. Purpose of the Test
Used to help identify students who are significantly behind in reading and determine the degree.
Determine oral reading strengths and weaknesses (between rate, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.
Monitor student progress in reading intervention
Conduct research

6. Relevant Population
Any student age 6 to 23 and 11 months

7. Administration and Scoring
Testing time is about 15 – 45 minutes
Entry point is determined by grade level
Grades 1-3: story 1
Grades 4-5: story 3
Grade 6-9: story 4
Grades 10-11: story 5
12-postsecondary: story 6
Student reads the story while the examiner times passage and marks reading errors
Administrator asks the student comprehension questions
The time and accuracy of reading and correctly answered questions are recorded

8. Recording and Interpreting
Information is recorded in the booklet in identifying information, GORT-5 scores, performance summary, corresponding descriptive terms, GORT-5 miscues, summary of other reading behaviors, prosody, and record of performance.
GORT-5 Scores:
Rate Score – time (in seconds) in which the student reads the passage; corresponds with a score number
Accuracy Score – deviations from print (number of misread words); corresponds with a score number
Fluency Score – Rate Score + Accuracy Score
Comprehension Score – number of correctly answered questions about the story (out of 5)
All are totaled which become the raw totals that other areas of the performance summary are based on

9. Recording and Interpreting cont’d
Performance Summary:
Raw totals from rate, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension are compared to charts detailing the age equivalent, grade equivalent, percentile rank, and scaled scores.
Scaled scores are totaled as a Sum of Scaled Scores. This is then compared to a chart that details Oral reading Percentile Rank and Oral Reading Index (ORI)
Scaled and index scores correlate to descriptive terms: very poor, poor, below average, average, above average, superior, and very superior
GORT-5 Miscues:
25 miscues (self-correction and substitution) are analyzed according to five categories: Meaning Similarity, Function Similarity, Graphic/Phonemic Similarity, Multiple Sources, and Self-Correction.
Each category is totaled and a percentage is determined

10. Recording and Interpreting cont’d
Summary of Other Reading Behaviors
Substitutions, omissions, mispronunciations, additions, reversal, and hesitations are totaled
Other observations such as posture, word- by-word reading, and poor enunciation are checked off if exhibited.
Prosody
The student is rated from 1 – 4 (1 being little/no attempt, 4 being consistently appropriate) on expression, volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pacing

11. Normative Information
The GORT-5 was normed on a sample of 2,556 students in 33 states.
Collection of a normative sample that is representative of the nation as a whole with regard to geographic region, gender, race, Hispanic status, parents’ educational attainment, household income, and exceptionality status (as compared with those reported by the US Bureau of the Census for school-age and post- secondary populations)

12. Reliability Standard Error of Measurement (SEM): Alternate Forms
Rate, Accuracy, Fluency, Comprehension = 1
Oral Reading Index = ranges from 2 to 4, so averaged to 3
Alternate Forms
The averaged correlation coefficients for Rate, Accuracy, Fluency, and Comprehension exceed .85.
Test-Retest
Sample of 248 Students ages 6 – 23 who varied widely in reading ability; 566% female, 44% male; 70% white, 22% African American, 4% Asian, 4% mixed or other; 27% Hispanic; 5% with disability/exceptionality; across Texas, New York, north Dakota, California, and Nebraska
The magnitude of the coefficients for the combined sample ranges from .82 to .9 and is large enough to strongly support the idea that the scores on both forms have acceptable test-retest reliability.
Interscorer
Four studies were performed in which interscorer agreement:
>.99
“approach 1.0”
“approached 1.0”
>.86

13. Validity
involves the “systematic examination of the test content to determine whether it covers a representative sample of the behavior domain to be measured” (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997, p. 115).
Scaled scores and index scores were correlated with the scores from 5 reading assessments: Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Reading Observation Scale, Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency, Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension, and Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency
Correlation coefficients were described as “very large” for fluency, comprehension, rate, and Oral Reading Index and “large” for accuracy.
The correlations between the GORT-5 and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) achievement test are reported as “large or very large”, providing evidence of a strong relationship between the GORT-5 and academic achievement.
The GORT-5 exhibited a moderate correlation with the WISC-IV, with the ORI correlated to a large degree.
Intercorrelation of the GORT-5’s scores had coefficients of .75 (very large) or higher.
The information provided suggests that the GORT-5 is a valid measure of reading ability.

14. Testing Sarah by Alexis
Percentile
Rank
Scaled Score
Descriptive Term
Rate 63 11
Average
Accuracy 37 9
Fluency 50 10
Comprehension
Oral Reading Index
100
Sarah made very few errors in the easiest stories, through Story 7 (approximately a 7th grade reading level).
Her errors became far more frequent beginning with Story 9, with her Accuracy score plummeting from a 3 (of a possible 5) on Story 8 to a 1 on Story 9.
The majority of Sarah’s errors were in:
- Syllabication  (aristocrats/aristoocrats, legislation/legistion, and artisan/art-i-sane),
- Spelling rules for addingprefixes/suffixes to words (inhospitable/hospitable, elude, eluded)
- Sound-symbol (reading domain/domin, cautioned/continued, several/serial).

15. Recommendations for Sarah
Cloze passages to help monitor for meaning when reading
Explicitly teach common rules for syllabication
Explicitly teach common root words, prefixes, and suffixes
Teaching Reading Sourcebook: For Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade by Bill Honig, Linda Diamond, and Linda Gutlohn.

16. Testing Walker by Mary Stewart
Percentile
Rank
Scaled Score
Descriptive Term
Rate
>99 19
Very Superior
Accuracy 75 12
Average
Fluency 98 16
Superior
Comprehension
Oral Reading Index
131
Walker read quickly and with confidence, but paid little attention to punctuation.
Walker made 0 – 2 errors in the easiest stories, through Story 6. He made 5 or less errors in stories 7 and 8. His errors greatly increased in stories 9 and up.
100% of Walker’s misread word errors were visually similar to the printed text. 44% of Walker’s miscues demonstrated function similarity to words from the stories (ex: impending/imminent, possible/possibly, this/the, etc.)
Walker’s reading rate remained consistent throughout testing and never dropped lower than a score of 2.

17. Recommendations for Walker
Resources
Explicit instruction on where accent goes
Reading fluency instruction with a focus on slowing rate – Guided Oral Reading
Practice following punctuation – correct pausing, etc.
Reading self-correction instruction
Walker currently attends school in a third grade general education classroom. It is recommended that Walker stay in his current placement as his scores do not indicate a need for additional intervention at this time.

18. Takeaways The GORT-5 was easy and quick to use.
The GORT-5 had very simple and basic instructions that were easy to follow and uncomplicated.
We were a little bit confused by the role of the comprehension questions. (How the comprehension affects the score, because it wasn’t factored into ceilings and basals)
The test had the feel of a DRA test, but the marking instructions were different. This confused us.
The percentile ranks seemed disproportionate in some ways.
For example, WM scored in the 75th percentile in reading accuracy (scoring better than or equal to 75% of his peers in the norm group), but was described as Average.
Sarah scored in the 37th percentile rank in accuracy which was also described as average.
The GORT-5 was an easy tool, but we prefer others (ex: DIBELS or DRA).

19. References J.L. Wiederholt & B. R. Bryant. (2012). Gray
Oral Reading Tests – Fifth Edition
(GORT-5). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.