Comparing Performance Standards on the Retention of Words Read Correctly Per Minute

To measure retention of oral reading fluency, three students attending a learning support classroom used a repeating reading strategy with two passages. Each student read one passage to a high performance standard and the other passage to a lower performance standard. Results show it took the students more practice to reach the higher performance standard in regards to both calendar days and practice trials. The retention measures revealed all students had comparable decrements with words read correctly per minute for both the high and low performance standards even though practice varied. During the last retention interval 3½ months after obtaining the performance standard, all students demonstrated the highest terminal frequency of words read correctly per minute in the high performance standard condition.