Below and Far Below Basic definition
Below and Far Below Basic means the percentage of students in a school that score in the bottom two performance categories. It is just as important to measure growth out of the bottom categories, as it is to measure growth into the top categories, making it possible to assess whether Reading First is effective for low-scoring students.2 A negative change in the percent of students testing “Below and Far Below Basic” means that students are exiting that performance level and moving to higher performance levels. Thus, a negative “gain” in this context means that growth is occurring.