This year I have tried giving the Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) as an alternative to the PM Benchmark. The IRI is easy to administer and has the running record component that is essential for testing fluency and decoding. This test does a more comprehensive breakdown of the reading strategies.
Overall, the instructional levels came out lower than on the PM Benchmark. However, that was not my main concern.
I was interested in seeing if there were common difficulties with reading strategies. This information could help guide my instruction, regardless of reading level. From the data, I could see that inference and finding detail were a concern. I will be able to use the strengths of main idea and cause/effect to strengthen areas of difficulty.
Another piece of information you can get from the IRI which I am currently playing around with is listening comprehension. It will be interesting to see if students test higher on listening...this will help to see if they use the strategies at all.
Because there are four different forms, there is flexibility in how to test.
Both the PM Benchmark and the IRI have their pros and cons. The key to either assessment is to administer it properly and analyze the results in order to drive instruction.
