The teacher's judgment determines the starting point for the assessment, leaving room for greater variance in results. When administering the Developmental Reading Assessment, the teacher selects three books that she believes correspond with the student's reading ability. The D.R.A. requires no standardized method for text selection. Without a standardized starting point, the text level could vary from teacher to teacher, especially when the test is administered at the beginning of the year when teachers have little familiarity with students. The original text level selection affects whether the student did in fact make gains in reading proficiency or was measured using an inappropriate starting level.
The D.R.A. does not provide answers for open-ended comprehension questions. The teacher scores these questions, which requires him to be extremely familiar with the text. This means teachers must read and remember the content for all of the potential independent reading books that could be used for each of his students, which could add up to a very high number. This is an additional time requirement for the teacher. But if the teacher is not familiar with the particular book, the accuracy of the assessment is compromised.
The Developmental Reading Assessment takes roughly 15 minutes per student to administer. This cuts into valuable class instructional and assistance time. Public schools can have anywhere from 20 to 40 students (especially in upper elementary and middle school; California has instituted a cap of 20 in classes for kindergarten through third). In classrooms where the ratio of teacher to student is 1 to 30, the administering of the D.R.A. limits her instruction time and availability to assist other students.
The D.R.A.'s guidelines instruct the teacher to stop the assessment when the student demonstrates a loss of control or becomes distracted. If the teacher does not have the ability to leave his classroom while conferencing individually with students, he will have no choice but to conduct the assessment while his class works or reads independently. This creates potential distractions for both the teacher and the student being assessed.
For students with test taking and social anxiety, tasks like reading out loud can arouse fears that limit her working memory and interfere with reading comprehension. If the assessed student perceives that the teacher is judging her or that other students can hear her struggling to read, the assessment score could be compromised and not reflect the child's actual independent reading level.