Reading Assistant What is the Reading Mastery Score or ARM Score?
- Forrest Rose
What is the Reading Assistant Reading Mastery Score or ARM Score
ARM is a composite score derived from our curriculum-based tasks as part of the Benchmark Assessment / Dyslexia Screener. During the screener process, students attend to 5 to 10 tasks, and the ARM Score is a synthesis of a student’s demonstrated ability across the tasks—every task that the student does, from the Oral Reading Fluency passage to Reading Comprehension to the Rapid Automatized Naming task, will factor into their ARM score.
Where can I find the ARM Score? The ARM score will now be the default score in the Benchmark Report, the Progress Report, and the Parent Report.
Why did Reading Assistant add the ARM Score?:
The Reading Assistant Reading Mastery (ARM) score enables you to compare scores for every single student (pre-readers included), providing a basis for:
Comparing reading ability across students within a grade
Measuring an individual student’s growth
Placing every child in a class into instructional groups
Unlike oral reading fluency (WCPM) scores, an ARM score will be produced for every student who completes the screening process, even if they cannot yet read the connected text and are still building foundational skills.
Can I still see WCPM? Of course! If you scroll to the left, you will find a dropdown menu for metrics, which allows you to change the type of score you are viewing in the report. Early Readers will still not have a WCPM score.
What else should I know about the ARM Score?:
The ARM score is norm-referenced so that you can tell how a student is doing at a glance. If a student’s ARM score is 1.1 and they are a third grader in month 1 of the school year, then that student is two full grades behind. If you have one student who scores a 6.34 and another who scores a 6.14, the first is two months further advanced in mastery than the second. Some kindergarten students may have a negative ARM score. For instance, a child with a -0.31 ARM score has about three months of learning before they are ready for kindergarten work.
This table generally shows the range of ARM scores between Reading Assistant Benchmark windows (BOY, MOY, EOY).
The best way to use the ARM Score is to consider the ARM PR. Reading Assistant has established cutlines consistent with those set by State Departments of Education and other educational technology assessments.
Does a student’s ARM score affect the student’s experience in practice mode?
No. The ARM score is not driving the student practice experience. Reading Assistant uses a separate algorithm to recommend content to students. This algorithm takes into account the student’s recent fluency performance as well as text complexity. For example, you may see students displaying a 2.0 ARM but receiving kindergarten or first-grade-level stories as practice resources.
Is the ARM score the same for English and Spanish?
Yes! Beginning with the 24/25 school year, the ARM score is available in English and Spanish on the same GLE scale.
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