The validity of three subtests of the Dynamic Indicators for Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) was investigated for kindergarten children in a large urban school district. A stratified, random sample of 330 participants was drawn from an entire cohort of kindergarten children. Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and Nonsense Word Fluency evidenced significant concurrent and predictive validity when compared to general reading ability measured by teacher report, individual assessments, and group-administered nationally standardized tests. Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity was also found when comparing these subtests to measures of specific literacy, cognitive, and social-behavioral constructs
