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A brief experimental analysis was used to evaluate the relative effectiveness of combining two consequences (contingent reinforcement or performance feedback) with an antecedent intervention (listening passage preview and repeated readings) on the oral reading fluency of 6 elementary students. The antecedent intervention increased the number of correctly read words per minute for all 6 students. For 4 of the students, pairing the antecedent intervention with either of the consequences resulted in higher reading rates over the antecedent intervention alone. Undifferentiated results were obtained for the remaining 2 participants. These results suggest that combining an antecedent intervention with consequences may enhance the oral reading fluency of students with reading problems. However, individual responsiveness to the different intervention components indicates that brief experimental analyses are warranted to identify the most effective intervention.

Researchers investigating the psychometric properties of curriculum-based measures in reading (R-CBM) have typically used readability formulas to create passages of similar difficulty. Despite their efforts, many researchers still find excessive, uncontrolled systematic error (presumably due to passage difficulty) in R-CBM data. This study investigates the validity of eight readability formulas by examining their ability to predict students' words read correctly in a minute (WRCM). The study is based on the premise that as grade levels assigned to passages by readability formulas increase, students' WRCM should decrease. Results indicate a modest relationship between reading fluency and passage difficulty as indicated by the.eight readability formulas. The formulas most commonly employed in R-CBM research were the poorest predictors. Findings suggest that efforts beyond the use of currently published readability estimates are needed in order to procure equivalent forms for R-CBM monitoring.Curriculum-based measurement in reading (R-CBM) is an assessment procedure in which students read passages and the number of words read correctly in one minute (WRCM) is recorded. R-CBM was placed on the "approved" list by the Reading First Assessment Committee (Kame'enui, 2002) meaning that it meets or exceeds standards of psychometric accuracy. R-CBM is an invaluable tool for many practitioners because it can assist in answering two common questions: (1) How well is this child reading? and (2) Is he or she making progress in reading?