Effects of targeted intervention on early literacy skills of at-risk students.
Wang, Chuang ; Algozzine, Bob
Abstract. Reading problems are among the most prevalent concerns in
schools; poor readers in elementary school who do not receive special
assistance are particularly at risk for dismal academic careers. In a
large-scale project, children with serious reading problems received
targeted intervention to address critical early literacy skills. The
assistance combined focused practice and frequent monitoring to provide
instruction needed to improve reading skills. Participating students
achieved significant gains in reading performance compared to a control
group not receiving intervention. The outcomes of the study relate to
continuing efforts to reduce the very large numbers of children failing
to achieve early literacy skills in U.S. schools.
**********
For success in any society, children need to know how to read, and
improving reading ability is consistently at the center of the federal,
state, and local initiatives to improve U.S. education (Frechtling,
Zhang, & Silverstein, 2006; International Reading Association, 2001;
Kamil, Mosenthal, Pearson, & Barr, 2000; National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000a, 2000b, 2000c; National
Reading Panel, 2000; National Research Council, 1998). The latest
emphasis on the importance of literacy success is clearly established in
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which requires schools to take
steps to ensure that all students are reading at grade level by the end
of 4th grade. Schools across the country are searching for ways to make
this happen, especially for the large numbers of students at risk of
continuing literacy failure.
When questions arise about how best to teach reading skills, all
signs point in the direction of a few fundamental factors. For example,
hearing, recognizing, and manipulating individual phonemes in spoken
words (i.e., phonemic awareness) is a powerful predictor of young
children's later reading development. Consequently, systematic
teaching of phonics is widely accepted as a critical area for early
reading instruction (Adams, 2001; Goodman, 2006; NICHD, 2000a, 2000b,
2000c; National Reading Panel, 2000; National Research Council, 1998;
Newman & Dickinson, 2001). According to the Committee on the
Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, &
Griffin, 1998), phonics methods include: 1) using reading to obtain
meaning from print, 2) having frequent and intensive opportunities to
read, 3) being exposed to frequent, regular spelling-sound
relationships, 4) learning about the nature of the alphabetic writing system, and 5) understanding the structure of spoken words. Further,
this group pointed out that adequate progress in learning to read beyond
initial levels depends on:
* A working understanding of how sounds are represented
alphabetically
* Sufficient practice in reading to achieve fluency with different
kinds of text
* Sufficient background knowledge and vocabulary to render written
texts meaningful and interesting
* Control over procedures for monitoring comprehension and
repairing misunderstandings
* Continued interest and motivation to read for a variety of
purposes (pp. 3-4).
Efforts to improve reading and literacy skills also must avoid some
pitfalls to be effective:
There are three potential stumbling blocks that are known to throw
children off course on the journey to skilled reading. The first
obstacle, which arises at the outset of reading acquisition, is
difficulty understanding and using the alphabetic principle--the idea
that written spellings systematically represent spoken words. It is hard
to comprehend connected text if word recognition is inaccurate or
laborious. The second obstacle is a failure to transfer the
comprehension skills of spoken language to reading and to acquire new
strategies that may be specifically needed for reading. The third
obstacle to reading will magnify the first two: the absence or loss of
an initial motivation to read or failure to develop a mature
appreciation of the rewards of reading. (Snow et al., 1998, pp. 4-5)
These critical factors, directions, and conclusions are supported
by "blue ribbon" panels (cf. NICHD, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c;
National Research Council, 1998), and most literacy scholars agree that
the majority of reading problems faced by children, adolescents, and
young adults are the result of stumbling blocks, obstacles, and problems
that should have been addressed during the early elementary school years
(Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2003; Baker, 2002; Goodman, 2006;
Guthrie & Davis, 2003; Ivey, 1999; King-Sears, Boudah, Goodwin,
Raskind, & Swanson, 2004; Lerner & Kline, 2006; McCray, 2001;
NICHD, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c; Tivnan & Hemphill, 2005). Clearly,
focusing on a few fundamental factors while avoiding challenges inherent
in and/or created by faulty literacy instruction makes the most sense as
a method for overcoming reading problems of struggling readers,
especially those from culturally and ethnically diverse backgrounds
(Allington, 2002; Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, & Yaghoub-Zadeh,
2001; Haager & Windmueller, 2001; Lerner & Kline, 2006; Winzer
& Mazurek, 1998).
O'Connor (2000) and Coyne, Kame'enui, and Simmons (2001)
defined the context and shared "big ideas" for prevention and
intervention in beginning reading. In this regard, the effects of
"tiers of intervention" have become increasingly popular as
attention has turned to response to intervention (RTI) and its role in
identifying students with disabilities (Marston, 2005, p. 539). In a
series of reports, Vaughn and her colleagues have documented and
discussed the value of effective interventions for students at risk for
reading difficulties (cf. Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003; Vaughn, Gersten,
& Chard, 2000; Vaughn, Mathes, Linan-Thompson, & Francis, 2005).
Kamps and Greenwood (2005) reported first-year 1st-grade findings for
students participating in secondary-level interventions (i.e.,
small-group reading instruction) in a large-scale project addressing
reading and behavior interventions. Although growth was evident in the
scores of experimental- and comparison-group students, the researchers
reported a continuing need for targeted interventions. In general, the
outcomes of specific studies that focused on tiers of intervention
reflect positive outcomes (Marston, 2005) and "that there will
continue to be a need for secondary interventions for more students in
high-risk schools" (Kamps & Greenwood, 2005, p. 506). Further,
continued research addressing improvement in early literacy skills of
at-risk students is warranted (cf. Marston, 2005; NICHD, 2000a, 2000b,
2000c; O'Connor, 2003; Vaughn, 2003; Vaughn, Linan-Thompson, &
Hickman, 2003).
As educators focused attention on enhancing early literacy skills,
"DIBELS has become a catchphrase" in efforts to use "test
data to inform instruction, to identify children at risk of failure in
reading, and to hold schools accountable for student achievement"
(Manzo, 2005, p. 1). Although not universally accepted as a benefit to
the field of reading (cf. Goodman, 2006), DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of
Basic Early Literacy Skills; Good & Kaminski, 2002, 2003)
assessments are widely used for identifying students likely to
experience reading failure and are sensitive, time-efficient measures
with multiple forms that allow for repeated assessments of value in
evaluating intervention efforts with those children (Elliott, Huai,
& Roach, 2007).
In this research, we used DIBELS benchmark assessments to identify
1st-graders at risk of reading failure. We provided intensive
interventions for these children and compared their progress using
DIBELS and other literacy measures to that of their peers who received
only district guided reading instruction. We were interested in adding
to the body of knowledge on the benefits of direct instruction on the
skills of children with low trajectories of early literacy success in
schools.
Method
Building on the successful work of others, our purpose was to
document the effects of targeted intervention on the reading performance
of students at risk of continuing reading failure. The program was
designed by using principles grounded in best practices for providing
effective literacy instruction, and was delivered by trained teaching
assistants participating in the efforts of a large-scale research center
and monitored by project personnel. The study was a randomized trial of
reading interventions conducted in the southeastern United States. The
design of this study was quasi-experimental in the sense that while we
randomly assigned schools to treatment and control conditions, we
selected participants meeting a widely accepted criterion for being at
risk of continuing reading failure.
Participants and Setting
The Behavior and Reading Improvement Center (BRIC) provided
services in six public elementary schools in an urban, integrated school
system enrolling more than 120,000 students each year. The ethnic
backgrounds of students in the district were rich and diverse, including
African American (43 percent), American Indian/multiracial (3 percent),
Asian (4 percent), white (40 percent), and Hispanic (10 percent) groups.
Students participating in BRIC interventions attended schools similar to
those included in other large-scale prevention and reform projects
(e.g., Texas Reading Initiative is the flagship school for Effective
Early Reading Intervention). Working closely with district personnel, we
used the following criteria in selecting schools as partners in our
research:
* Recognized performance accountability ratings ("At
Standard" or above) on national, state, or local assessments
* Above 40 percent participation in federal free and reduced-price
lunch program
* Evidence of effective implementation of the district's early
reading intervention program and full allocation (at least 120 minutes)
of literacy block instructional time
* Willingness to use project-identified measures as evidence of
reading and behavior improvement
* Support from the superintendent, senior staff, principal, and
campus site-based decision-making team, faculty, and staff
* Willingness to serve as a demonstration site and to collaborate
in efforts to mentor other schools.
Our school selection procedure involved several steps: From a pool
that met our selection criteria, project staff and school district
advisory council members identified six BRIC schools for the study. We
randomly selected 2 of the 6 BRIC schools to serve as the control group;
the other 4 BRIC schools received the intervention.
Three of the BRIC schools enrolled more than 500 students and 3 of
them had enrollments below 500; our smallest school had 398 students and
our largest school enrolled 794 children in kindergarten through 5th
grade. In general, we provided BRIC interventions in schools enrolling
more children from ethnic minority backgrounds than did other schools in
the district. African American children represent 43 percent of the
overall student population in this school system; their representation
in the project was considerably higher in 5 of the 6 schools. While
representing a slight majority in the district (40 percent), white
children represented less than 15 percent of the students attending all
but one of the BRIC schools. Percentages of Hispanic children were above
the school system average in four of the BRIC schools. The ethnic
distributions with regard to the percentage of non-white students within
each school population were not statistically different across the
schools, [chi square] (5, N = 536) = 4.72, p = .45. The number of
1st-grade students, total number of exceptional children, and the free-
or reduced-price lunch children were all comparable across schools (see
Table 1), suggesting that these six schools were comparable in the
children's background information. As a result, the unit of
analysis was at the student level instead of at the school level.
We used the sixth edition of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early
Literacy Skills (DIBELS) to identify children "at-risk" for
reading failure. We included 1st-graders whose scores on the combination
of Letter Naming, Phonemic Segmentation, and Nonsense Word assessments
fell in the "Emerging" or "Some Risk" instructional
range, based on the decision rules developed by the authors of the
measures (see http://dibels.uoregon. edu/benchmarkgoals.pdf). From these
children in need of "targeted" intervention, 139 first-grade
students were included in treatment (n = 101) and control schools (n =
38). The available resources controlled the sample size of the treatment
group (e.g., teaching assistants). Of the treatment group, 59 (58.42
percent) were males and 42 (41.58 percent) were females. Of the control
group, 26 (68.42 percent) were males and 12 (31.58 percent) were
females. The distributions of male and female students within the
treatment and control groups were not statistically different, [chi
square] (1, N= 139) = 1.16, p = .28. With respect to participants'
ethnicity background information, 57 (58.76 percent) were African
Americans and 40 (41.24 percent) were Hispanics/Latinos, Asians, or
whites in the treatment group. Only 25 of the 38 students in the control
group provided their ethnicity information. Of these, 18 (72.00 percent)
were African Americans and 7 (28.00 percent) were Hispanics, Asians, or
whites. The distribution of student ethnicity information was also
independent of the arrangement of treatment and control groups, [chi
square] (1, N = 122) = 1.47, p = .23. Therefore, the treatment and
control group students were comparable with respect to their ethnicity
and gender, thus controlling these possible confounding variables in the
following analyses.
Procedure
The BRIC, in collaboration with professionals in the local school
district, supports the implementation and evaluation of a program to
prevent the development and/or persistence of serious behavior and
reading failure. Open Court (SRA/McGraw-Hill) is the core reading
program in all elementary schools. Consultants and literacy facilitators
support district-wide use of the program. All students participated in a
120-minute literacy block of instruction that focused on scripted
lessons for all students and independent work time (IWT) for practicing
skills, enriching content, and remedial assistance, as needed and
appropriate for individuals and groups of students. All students who
failed to make adequate progress in the core curriculum received
replacement supplemental instruction during the IWT portion of their
literacy instruction. During this time, students in the control group
participated in activities that were part of the core curriculum
provided by their teachers, who received initial and continuing
professional development from consultants and literacy facilitators.
Students in the treatment group participated in the project-sponsored
lessons presented by teaching assistants, who provided initial and
continuing professional development and supervision by project
personnel.
Supplemental, Targeted Intervention Program. We implemented a
project-developed treatment to increase phonemic awareness, alphabetic
understanding, decoding skills, and fluency of targeted students who
were not progressing at the expected rate for their grade level, or were
shown through screening to be at risk for failure in reading. The
scripted lessons followed formats and a sequence of skills recommended
in Direct Instruction Reading (Carnine, Silbert, Kame'enui, &
Tarver, 2004); and they incorporated six principles of instructional
design as described by Simmons and Kame'enui (1998). Students
participating in the targeted intervention received from 10 to 15
minutes a day of explicit instruction using lessons incorporating the
following areas: 1) onset-rime, auditory skills of blending and
segmenting (i.e., phonemic awareness); 2) letter-sound correspondences
(i.e., alphabetic understanding); 3) reading phonetically regular words
(i.e., decoding); 4) fluency building with connected text; and 5) sight
word practice. Sight words practiced as part of the intervention were
the most frequently used ones in the 1st-grade materials of Open Court.
The 110 lessons in the program address all of the decoding skills
included in the 1st-grade core literacy curriculum.
Dependent Measures. We used two measures for assessing reading
skills: Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised (WRMT-R; Woodcock, 1987)
and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS). We
selected the WRMT-R because it is widely used as a valid instrument to
measure elementary school students' early literacy competence. The
district used the DIBELS for K-2 benchmark, program monitoring, and
end-of-year assessments within the district.
We used the Word Attack (WA) subtest of WRMT-R as an index of
children's decoding skills. It requires students to read nonsense
words in isolation. The Word Identification (WI) subtest requires the
student to read real words in isolation. The Passage Comprehension (PC)
subtest requires the student to read a sentence (or sentences) and
supply one word that has been deleted. These measures have been widely
used in research and evaluation studies focused on intervention programs
with characteristics that were similar to those present in this and
similar research projects (cf. Kamps & Greenwood, 2005). The
grade-based standardized scores for these measures were used in this
study. The national standardized values range from 10 to 175, with a
mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15.
In the Examiners Manual, Woodcock (1987) indicated that the
validity of the WRMT-R is largely based on content and concurrent
validity studies and that the structure of the measure follows the same
scope and sequence as other global assessments of reading ability.
Outside experts, curriculum specialists, and experienced teachers
contributed to the development of the test items. Concurrent validity
studies illustrate that the WRMT-R correlated well with other
instruments known to measure reading (e.g., mean correlation
coefficients of .76, .69, and .63 for WI, WA, and PC, respectively),
when compared to similar tests on the Woodcock-Johnson
Psycho-Educational Test Battery (Woodcock & Johnson, 1977). The
American Guidance Service examined the correlation between the WRMT-R
Form G and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC; Kaufman
& Kaufman, 1983) and found that the median validity coefficient between Total Reading Full-Scale score and the K-ABC Reading score was
.85 (Williams & Eaves, 2001). Woodcock (1987) reported split-half
reliabilities, with the Spearman-Brown correction, using members of the
original norm group for the calculations. The median reliability
coefficients were high: WA (r = .89); WI (r = .97); and PC (r = .92).
In general, the DIBELS assessments have excellent technical
adequacy as well (cf. Elliott, Lee, & Tollefson, 2001; Fuchs, Fuchs,
& Compton, 2004; Good, Kaminski, Simmons, & Kame'enui,
2001; Hintze, Ryan, & Stoner, 2003; Kaminski & Good, 1996;
Speece, Mills, Ritchey, & Hill, 2003; Vadasy, Sanders, & Peyton,
2005). In this research, two of the four subtests of DIBELS were
administered: phoneme segmentation fluency (PSF) was assessed to measure
students' phonological awareness, such as the students' skill
to identify and produce the initial sound of a given word; and nonsense
word fluency (NWF) was assessed to measure students' mastery of
alphabetical principal, such as students' knowledge of letter-sound
correspondences, as well as their ability to blend letters together to
form unfamiliar nonsense words.
PSF assesses the ability to segment words into individual phonemes.
The examiner presents three- and four-syllable words orally, and the
student is instructed to repeat the word orally in segmented syllables.
The number of correct phonemes per minute is the recorded score.
Alternate-form reliability for PSF is .88 for kindergarten children
(Kaminski & Good, 1996). Concurrent, criterion-related validity of
PSF with the readiness cluster score of the Woodcock-Johnson
Psycho-Educational Battery was .54 in the spring of kindergarten (Good
et al., 2001). Concurrent validity estimates ranged from .43 to .65 on
other measures of cognitive ability and school readiness (Kaminski &
Good, 1996). Predictive validity of spring kindergarten PSF with spring
1st-grade Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery was .68 and .62
with curriculum-based measurement Oral Reading Fluency (Good et al.,
2001).
For NWF, students have i minute to read consonant-vowel-consonant
pseudo-words. The score is the number of sounds produced correctly, with
credit earned either by saying individual sounds in the pseudo-words or
by phonologically recoding the pseudo-words (with three sounds awarded
for each correctly read pseudo-word). Good et al. (2001) reported
concurrent validity, with the Woodcock-Johnson readiness cluster score
(i.e., visual auditory learning and letter identification) ranging
between .35 in May to .59 in February (median coefficient = .52) with
samples of 70 to 242 children. The predictive validity coefficients from
October of 1st grade to May of 1st grade were .71 with respect to
passage reading fluency and .52 with respect to the Woodcock-Johnson
reading cluster score.
Treatment Fidelity. In order to ensure that assistants implemented
the intervention as intended, they were regularly observed during an
entire instructional session. We used a rating scale to evaluate the
fidelity of implementation of each activity or section of a lesson
across critical categories: 1) appropriate pacing, 2) implementation of
prescribed procedures, 3) error correction with appropriate scaffolding,
and 4) student engagement and attentiveness. A score of 3 indicated that
the teacher implemented the category exactly as intended. A score of 2
indicated an acceptable manner of implementation for a category, but
with some error. A score of 1 represented a poorly implemented category.
Likewise, we included a global checklist (1 = acceptable, 0 =
unacceptable) for readiness of instructional materials, appropriate
student seating arrangement, and instructor warmth and enthusiasm. As an
indication of overall fidelity for each instructional session observed,
we calculated the percent of categories with acceptable or higher
ratings. On average across 415 observations, teaching assistants
conducted their respective interventions with high levels of fidelity (M
= 92.53%, Range = 83.41-99.59).
Data Analysis
Doubly Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was employed when
non-commensurate dependent variables, WI, WA, PC, NEF, and PSF, were
repeatedly measured across the treatment and control groups (Tabachnick
& Fidell, 2007). Wilks' Lambda was used as the test statistic for MANOVA, and the overall alpha level was set at .05 for all
statistical analyses in this study.
Plots of residuals against the order of observations were scattered without clear patterns, indicating that the assumption of independent
observations was tenable. We checked the multivariate normality by
examining the marginal (univariate) normality for each variable. We used
normal probability plots of the residuals and histograms to check the
distribution of each variable. Square root transformations corrected the
positively skewed distribution of fall NWF and PSF, but no difference
was evident with respect to the statistical analytic results using
original NWF and PSF scores and the transformed values. Therefore, we
used the original NWF and PSF scores for all analyses to simplify the
interpretation of outcomes. Box's M tests for the equality of
covariance matrices turned out to be significant (p < .05) for the
independent measures MANOVA and repeated measures MANOVA. Since the
group sizes are unequal (101 for the treatment and 38 for the control),
the values of the generalized variance (the determinants of the
covariance matrices) of each group were compared to determine if the
MANOVA results were liberal or conservative. In order to visually
examine students' growth of reading skills within the treatment and
control groups, respectively, figures illustrating the change of the
participants' reading skills were also developed.
Results
Descriptive statistics of the participants' reading skills
measured are presented in Table 2 with respect to both treatment and
control groups. The MANOVA for students' reading skills in the fall
suggested that the treatment and control groups differ significantly on
the combination of the five variables, Wilks' Lambda = 0.88, F(5,
131) = 3.61, p = .004, partial [[eta].sup.2] = .12, and that the
observed power is .92. The log of the determinant of the covariance
matrix of dependent variables for the control group is 21.81 and that
for the treatment group is 23.61, which means that the larger
generalized variance was with the larger group. Therefore, the results
could only be conservative, indicating no concern of type I error
(Stevens, 2002). Nevertheless, none of the tests of between-subjects
effects was statistically significant, F(1,135) = 0.05,p =. 82 for PSF,
F(1, 135) = 3.66, p = .06 for NWF, F(1, 135) = 0.14, p = .71 for WI,
F(1, 135) = 1.36, p = .25 for WA, and F(1, 135) = 2.15, p = .15 for PC.
None of the effect sizes measured by partial [[eta].sup.2] was larger
than .03.
The differences between the fall and spring student reading skills,
however, were found to be statistically significant, Wilks' Lambda
= 0.31, F(5, 111) = 49.00, p < .001, partial [[eta].sup.2] = .69. The
results indicated no significant differences between the treatment and
control group student fall and spring average reading skills, but all
students gained significantly from the fall to the spring. The
interaction between time (fall and spring) and status (treatment and
control) was significant, Wilks' Lambda = 0.67, F(5, 111) = 3.43, p
<.01, partial [[eta].sup.2] = .13, and the observed power is .90. The
significant interaction suggested that, on average, the treatment group
gained more than the control group in reading skills (see Figures 1-3
for WI, WA, and PC).
Tests of within-subjects contrasts showed non-significant
interactions between time and status for NWF, F(1, 115) = 0.024, p =
.878 and PC, F(1, 115) = 0.021, p = .884. As a result, we interpreted
the main effects of these two variables. Both the treatment and control
group gained significantly from the fall to the spring on NWF, F(1,115)
= 146.35, p < .001, partial [[eta].sup.2] = .56 and PC, F(1, 115) =
47.49,p < .001, partial [[eta].sup.2] = .29. Due to the significant
time and status interactions for PSF, F(1, 115) = 8.20,p = .01; WI,
F(1,115) = 4.67,p = .03; and WA, F(1,115) = 5.79,p = .02, the gains of
student reading skills on these measures were examined independently
with t-tests for the treatment and control groups. Cohen's d
(Cohen, 1988) was used to report the effect size of the differences.
For PSF, both treatment and control groups made statistically
significant gains: t(83) = -11.68,p < .001, d = 1.28, for the
treatment group and t(34) = -5.78,p < .001, d = .98, for the control
group. For WI, the treatment group made significant gains, t(87) =
-6.37, p < .001, d = .68, but the control group did not, t(33) =
-1.22, p > .05, d = .21. For WA, the treatment made significant
gains, t(87) = -3.68, p < .001, d = .39, but the control group scored
lower in the spring than in the fall, although this loss was not
statistically significant t(33) = .70, p > .05, d = .12. Even when
both the treatment and control groups made statistically significant
gains, the treatment group gained more than the control group, as
indicated by the significant time and status interactions.
Discussion and Conclusions
The ability to read is highly valued and essential for academic,
social, and economic advancement. Despite the United States having a
mostly effective educational system, many children fail to read
adequately by the end of 3rd grade. Large numbers of young people
continue to struggle with reading and remain at risk in middle school,
rarely performing at the same level as their peers (cf. Allington &
McGill-Franzen, 2003; Baker, 2002; Bintz, 1997; Bishop, 2003; Bishop
& League, 2006; Guthrie & Davis, 2003; International Reading
Association, 2001; Ivey, 1999; Ivey & Broaddus, 2000; Marston, 2005;
McCray, 2001; McCray, Vaughn, & Neal, 2001; Tivnan & Hemphill,
2005; Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003). Culturally and ethnically diverse
learners who are struggling readers are also more likely to experience
continuous failure, to be referred and placed in special education, to
experience life in the lower track in school, and to enter the world
after school as a high school dropout (Haager & Windmueller, 2001;
King-Sears et al., 2004; McCray, 2001; McGill-Franzen, 2005; Tivnan
& Hemphill, 2005; Vaughn et al., 2005; Winzer & Mazurek, 1998).
In this article, we are concerned with young people whose
educational careers are in danger because they do not read well enough
to succeed in school, including about 80 percent of students with
learning disabilities and related literacy-based disorders who have
difficulty reading and writing (Frankenberger & Franzaglio, 1991;
Kirk & Elkins, 1975; Lerner & Kline, 2006; Lyon, 1985; Snow et
al., 1998; Ysseldyke & Algozzine, 1995; Ysseldyke, Algozzine, &
Thurlow, 2000). Low reading performance in early grades and potential
academic failure and dropout after 8th grade signal the continuing need
for immediate, explicit, and effective reading interventions for at-risk
students, especially those with reading disabilities (Haager &
Windmueller, 2001; Kamps & Greenwood, 2005; Lerner & Kline,
2006; McCray, 2001; McGill-Franzen, 2005; Tivnan & Hemphill, 2005).
In a recent listing of"must reads," the Research
Committee of the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD) identified
three topics "receiving widespread attention in the field of
LD" (King-Sears et al., 2004, p. 77):
1. Focusing attention on increasing implementation of
research-based practices in schools.
2. Exploring specialized, individualized, and responsive practices
for meeting the needs of students with different types of learning
disabilities.
3. Examining the implications of applying new identification and
eligibility criteria within the context of response to intervention
(RTI) models.
The commentaries provide a context for the importance of each
topic, provide reasons for using the information, and point to future
value in the field of learning disabilities. Each area has relevance for
our research.
Articles related to the first two topics addressed needs and
difficulties associated with "scaling up" or increasing the
use of evidence-based interventions and practices in U.S. schools. The
review of the scholarly work of others pointed out the importance of
administrative support, evidence-based core reading in general education
classrooms, ongoing professional development, flexibility,
individualized attention, and continuous monitoring to the success of
efforts to improve instruction for students at risk of failure in
school. In our study, we provided intensive and continuing professional
development to assistants delivering targeted, small-group, and
individual interventions to 1st-grade students. We used direct,
curriculum-based measures to identify students in need of intervention,
and we used ongoing data-based decision-making to inform the special
instruction and to alter the progress and process of providing the
assistance. Administrator support was evident in overall acceptance of
the model in their schools and in providing flexible personnel and
scheduling opportunities so that more students needing supplementary
instruction received it, or that those needing it received more time and
practice using it. The study took place in schools implementing an
evidence-based core reading program with considerable district-level
support. Our evidence supports the "must reads" conclusion
"that struggling readers benefit from an intensive, explicit
approach to reading instruction" (King-Sears et al., 2004, p. 82).
Though less developed, likely because it is closely related to the
other areas, the third topic area paid homage to the growing interest on
RTI and its "intended benefits" in efforts to improve
decision-making for students likely to experience continuing academic
difficulties, including:
* Students who are at risk for school failure are availed of [a]
"bridge" intended to close the gap between their performance
and that of their same-age peers.
* All students receive effective instructional procedures in which
their progress is monitored and responsive instruction Occurs.
* Fewer students end up in a program for students with LD, because
their learning issues are addressed quickly and effectively.
* More students who are found eligible for special education
services are more likely to have "true" learning disabilities.
(King-Sears et al., 2004, p. 78)
Although germane to RTI, these clearly are general outcomes with
relevance to efforts to improve reading instruction and schooling for
all children. We did not initiate our study to illustrate presumed or
actual impact of RTI, but our work bears witness to these global
benefits of early intervention and multi-leveled literacy instruction.
The treatment group students made statistically significant progress on
all three grade-based standard scores of WRMT-R, but the control group
students only made statistically significant progress on one of these
three measures, and the effect sizes for the two non-significant
differences are both small (d = .21 and d =.12, respectively). This
indicates that the differences will not likely be statistically
significant, even with a larger sample, because Cohen's d (Cohen,
1988) represents the standard difference between the two samples (the
relative difference divided by the pooled sample standard deviation).
Furthermore, the effect sizes of the difference between fall and spring
scores for WI and WA are all larger than those of the control group
students (.68 versus .21 and .39 versus .12), indicating that the
students in the treatment group made greater improvements in their
literacy skills during the first year compared with the students in the
control group. When students' literacy skills were measured by PSF
and compared with the control group students, the treatment group
students scored lower in the fall (18.77 versus 19.50) but higher in the
spring (37.35 versus 30.83). The difference was not statistically
significant in the fall but significant in the spring, indicating that
the treatment group students not only caught up with the control group
students but also surpassed them. The outcome for NWF was different,
with both groups making significant progress during the school year.
This makes sense in light of the focus of early lessons in PC on
letter-sound correspondences (i.e., alphabetic understanding) and
auditory skills of blending and segmenting (i.e., phonemic
awareness)--the targets of intervention for children in the treatment
group.
Continuing concern for low-performing students, especially those in
urban, high-risk environments, caused many districts to adopt
school-wide models for the reform of literacy instruction, and that
trend intensified under No Child Left Behind and the Reading First Act
(cf. Tivnan & Hemphill, 2005; U.S. Department of Education, 2004).
The model evaluated in this research is grounded in the accumulated
knowledge in general and special education on effective reading
instruction and tutorial programs (cf. Allington, 2002; Bintz, 1997;
Bishop, 2003; Clay, 1985; Coyne et al., 2001; Goodman, 2006; Guthrie
& Davis, 2003; Ivey, 1999; Kamps & Greenwood, 2005; King-Sears
et al., 2004; NICHD, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c; Slavin, Madden, Dolan, &
Wasik, 1996; Snow, et al., 1998; Torgesen, 1995; Vadasy, Jenkins, Antil,
Wayne, & O'Connor, 1997; Vaughn et al., 2005; Wasik &
Slavin, 1993). Its primary goal was to provide a basic understanding of
reading to nonreaders and those with pronounced reading difficulty by
employing age-appropriate materials, promoting independence in reading,
and using a direct instructional approach with repetition and immediate
performance feedback.
Limitations and Suggestions for Future Studies
The students in the treatment group made higher gains in literacy
measures than did the students in the control group, but independent
measures MANOVA failed to detect any statistically significant
differences between the treatment and control groups on these same
measures. This indicates that while the growth rates for the students in
the treatment group are higher than those in the control group, the
differences between the treatment and control groups may take some time
to be statistically significant. Therefore, longitudinal work appears
warranted so that students' growth rates can be measured over
consecutive years, and the gap between the treatment and control group
students might be large enough to be detected by independent measures
MANOVA. With respect to the methodology, this study also revealed the
limitations of independent measures MANOVA, which only looks at two
measurement points. With a longitudinal study, hierarchical linear
modeling (HLM) could be used to examine the trajectory of the
students' growth in literacy through growth-curve analysis.
The knowledge base about how to improve early literacy is richer
today than ever before, and the field of learning disabilities is facing
"a desirable dilemma" relative to "how to ensure that
those techniques become more widespread and universal practices"
(cf. Goodman, 2006; King-Sears et al., 2004, p. 87). The need is clear
for continuing research demonstrating that teachers and other
professionals can implement these methods with positive effects in
typical schools and educational contexts, rather than only in tightly
controlled, small-scale experimental settings. These studies must
provide teachers access to evidence-based practices that initiate,
support, and sustain early and intensive intervention.
Authors' Note: Support for this research was provided in part
by Grant No. H237F40012 and H238X00001 from the U.S. Department of
Education, Office of Special Education Programs, awarded to the
University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The opinions expressed do not
necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of
Education, and no official endorsement should be inferred.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Chuang
Wang, BRIC/EDLD/COED, University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
Charlotte, NC 28223 [cwangl5@uncc.edu].
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Chuang Wang
Bob Algozzine
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Table 1
Background Information of Participating Schools in Percentages
of the School Population
School Student Background Information
Exceptional
Non-White 1st Grade Children
01 90 17 11
02 99 19 19
03 88 17 11
04 89 16 12
05 73 17 12
06 97 17 18
[chi square] 4.72 (p =.45) 0.28 (p = .99) 4.83 (p =.44)
School Student Background Information
Free/Reduced-
price Lunch
01 77
02 94
03 73
04 86
05 59
06 92
[chi square] 10.91 (p =.05)
Note. The degrees of freedom for all these chi-square tests were 5.
Table 2
Means and Standard Deviations of the Literacy Skills Measured
Treatment Control
Literacy Skill Fall Spring Fall Spring
Word Identification 93.92 100.73 94.70 95.66
(13.89) (13.25) (15.99) (18.37)
Word Attack 95.52 100.95 98.00 95.83
(14.55) (15.31) (13.66) (20.52)
Passage Comprehension 84.49 93.21 82.05 88.57
(12.50) (12.76) (12.64) (14.38)
Phoneme Segmentation Fluency 18.77 37.35 19.50 30.83
(14.46) (13.07) (14.49) (16.59)
Nonsense Word Fluency 12.96 42.24 9.00 39.03
(11.94) (21.98) (6.44) (29.54)
Note. Values enclosed in parentheses are standard deviations.
Figure 1: Students' grade-based standardized scores for word
identification
Word Identification
Standard Score
Assessment
Treatment Control
Fall 93.92 94.70
Spring 100.73 95.66
Figure 2: Students' grade-based standardized scores for word attack
Word Attack
Standard Score
Assessment
Treatment Control
Fall 95.52 98.00
Spring 100.95 95.83
Figure 3: Students' grade-based standardized scores for passage
comprehension
Passage Comprehension
Standard Score
Assessment
Treatment Control
Fall 84.49 82.05
Spring 93.21 88.57
