ies.ed.gov

Connecting Research,Policy and Practice

Improving Reading Outcomes for Students with or at Risk for Reading Disabilities: A Synthesis of the Contributions

from the Institute of Education Sciences Research Centers

Carol McDonald Connor, ASURollanda O’Connor, UC-Riverside

Intro - Joan McLaughlin, IES Q&As – Elizabeth Albro, IES

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Available on IES Website

• http://ies.ed.gov/ncser/pubs/20143000/pdf/20143000.pdf

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Acknowledgements

• Co-Authors– Carol Connor (Chair), Arizona State– Paul Alberto, Georgia State– Donald Compton, Vanderbilt– Rollanda O’Connor, U of California, Riverside

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Purpose of the Synthesis

• To review and synthesize articles and chapters that described products of IES funded research projects that focused on improving reading for children with or at risk for reading disabilities.

• Focus was on grants that were initially awarded from 2002 through 2008 through the National Center for Education Research and the National Center for Special Education Research.

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Preparing the Synthesis

• IES identifies a topic for study, names a Chair, and with the Chair’s input identifies a set of co-authors

• IES identifies all relevant grants for the topic articles & gathers all peer-reviewed articles and book chapters relevant to the topic – For this synthesis, 48 research projects & 111 publications were

reviewed• Panel meets to discuss articles & frame the synthesis• Synthesis is limited to IES-funded research• Final product reflects panels’ expert judgment & is

externally peer-reviewed prior to publication

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Areas of Focus

• Assessment• Basic Cognitive and Linguistic Processes• Intervention• Professional Development

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Assessment

What have we learned about effective identification and assessment of students

who have or are at risk for reading difficulties or disabilities?

4 contributions

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Contribution 1

• Contribution 1. Screening all students’ reading skills (i.e., universal screening) at the beginning of the school year, especially in the early grades, can be a valid and efficient way to identify students who are at risk for poor reading outcomes.

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Contribution 2

• Contribution 2. Using assessments to monitor students’ progress can be a valid and efficient way to guide the decision making process –for example, through a Response to Intervention (RTI) approach-for determining whether an intervention is improving a student's reading skills.

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Contribution 3

• Contribution 3: New assessments for English learners indicate that reading comprehension can be assessed without overburdening word reading and oral language skills.

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Contribution 4

• Contribution 4: Assessment accommodations can be made for students with disabilities that do not modify the construct being measured, and therefore represent a valid measure of this construct. – For example, reading aloud the Gates MacGinitie

improved scores for students with LD but not for typical students (Cook et al., 2010)

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And Since the Synthesis Was Published

• Early response to intervention measures– Beach & O’Connor, 2013

• New ways of assessing reading for understanding– O’Reilly et al., 2014

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Basic Cognitive and Linguistic Processes

What are the basic cognitive and linguistic processes that support successful reading and how can these skills be improved for students

who have or who are at risk for reading disabilities?

3 Contributions

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Contribution 5

• Contribution 5: Several basic cognitive processes, including working memory and abstract and inferential reasoning, have been found to be important for students’ reading success. – For example, Glenberg et al., showed that enacting stories

improved students’ retention of the stories.– Swanson & O’Connor (2009) conjectured that improving fluency

might help compensate for weaker working memory. The intervention improved fluency but not working memory – fluency and working memory operated independently.

– Van den Broek et al., 2009, used eye tracking to examine the reading skills of students. They found that although patterns of reading were similar (e.g., fixations) the weaker readers were less efficient and less strategic – i.e., generating less coherent mental representations of the text

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Contribution 6

• Contribution 6. Malleable linguistic processes, such as oral language skills and vocabulary, contribute to children’s reading performance. – Uccelli & Paez (2007): Spanish-English

narrative skills and vocabulary– Terry et al., (2012): changing use of non-

mainstream dialect from first to second grade predicted reading outcomes

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Contribution 7

• Contribution 7: Although the same sets of cognitive and linguistic skills are involved in learning to read, children bring unique constellations of these skills to the classroom with important implications for instruction.

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And Since the Synthesis Was Published

• Eye movement studies have illuminated processes of reading for understanding– Connor, Radach, et al., 2014– Vortius et al., 2013

• Importance of metacognition for reading for understanding– Roberts et al., 2014

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Intervention

How do we make reading instruction more effective for students who have or are at risk for

developing reading disabilities? How do we teach reading to students with low-incidence

disabilities?

6 Contributions

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Contribution 8:

Increasing the intensity of interventions in kindergarten and first grade may prevent reading difficulties for many students. • Kindergarten– Vadasy & Sanders, 2008, 2010: Effective also for ELL– Hagan-Burke et al., 2010: Effective also for students with behavior

difficulties• Grade 1– Denton et al., 2010: Scales up effective intervention

• Reading rate continues to lag, on average

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Contribution 9:

Fluency interventions that focus on repeated reading or reading a range of text, along with opportunities to practice reading in the classroom may generally improve students’ fluency and comprehension. • Vadasy & Sanders, 2008a,b: Gr 4-5• Vadasy & Sanders, 2009: Gr 2-3• O’Connor et al., 2007, 2009, 2010: Gr 2 & 4

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Contribution 10:

Language outcomes for many children at risk for language disabilities can improve if they are provided extensive opportunities to hear and use complex oral language.• K: Interactive discussion and practice of word meanings

– Coyne, McCoach, & Kapp, 2007– Loftus, Coyne et al., 2010

• Gr 1: Teacher plus small group in a tiered model– Maynard, Pullen & Coyne, 2010– Pullen et al., 2010

• Forgetting was common for low-skilled students

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Contribution 11:

Peer-assisted or collaborative learning is a promising method of increasing the intensity of instruction for students and improving their reading outcomes. • PALS

– McMaster, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 2008: Effective for many; however less effective than adult tutoring

– Saenz et al., 2007: Include ELL

• Collaborative Strategic Reading– Vaughn, Klingner et al., 2011: Grades 7-8

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Contribution 12:

Interventions that are differentiated to target an individual student’s profile of component skills can improve reading development. • Connor et al., 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011: Gr K, 1, 3

– Individualized Student Instruction, with Assessment to Instruction guidance for teachers

• Gelzheiser et al., 2011: Gr 4 students with reading disability– Varied lesson components depending on

current skills

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Contribution 13:

What we understand about how typically developing readers learn to read also appears to hold for students with low incidence disabilities, including children with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities, and children who are deaf or hard of hearing.• Wise et al., 2010: Relations among reading skills are similar• Browder et al., 2008: Takes more time, but comprehensive instruction is more

effective than sight word approaches alone.• Allor et al., 2010: Takes 3 years to achieve end-of-Gr1 outcomes• Alberto et al., 2007, 2010: Comprehensive lessons for students with

moderate/severe ID• Lederberg & colleagues (2008): Over 70% of students who are DHH may

benefit from phonological and phonics-based reading approaches

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And Since the Synthesis Was Published

• Response to Intervention Models• Vocabulary• Interventions in Middle Schools• Technology

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Response to Intervention (RtI) Models

• Does Beginning in K Matter (O’Connor et al., 2014)• Access to RtI in K or Gr 1 improve Gr 2 outcomes over typical practice• RtI in K > RtI in Gr1 at the end of 1st grade

• Students who are English Language Learners (O’Connor et al., 2014)

• Effects of K intervention lasted through 2nd grade for ELL• Eliminated over- and under-identification of ELLs by 4th grade

• Long-term Outcomes with K-4 access to RtI (O’Connor et al., 2013)

• Higher reading scores for students at risk• No statistical difference in percent of SpEd• Those identified for SpEd had more severe deficits

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Improving Vocabulary

• In Primary Grades:– Improving teachers’ language-focused

comprehension instruction and support also improved their overall classroom quality ratings (Justice et al., in press)

– Students in K-2 can learn morphology, but it doesn’t impact overall reading development (Apel & Diehm, 2013-14)

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Vocabulary in Middle Schools

• Teachers’ use of sophisticated vocabulary is linked to vocabulary growth of students in their classes (Games & Leseaux, 2012; Silverman et al., 2013)

• Large-scale implementation by teachers of vocabulary programs yields positive and lasting effects (Lawrence, Snow et al., 2012; Lesaux & Kieffer, in press)

– WHO benefits differs:• Word Generation benefits native English speakers more than ELLs;

students not proficient in English showed no effects• ALIAS benefited ELL > EO

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Students with Reading Disabilities in Middle Schools

– Direct reading intervention with 6th graders (Roberts, Fletcher, Vaughn et al., 2013)

• One year of small-group intervention improved students’ ability to compensate for poor verbal skills.

• 3 years improved reading comprehension and school behavior

– Direct intervention using U.S. History content (O’Connor, Beach, Sanchez et al., in press)

• Improved word reading and vocabulary; generalized to history knowledge and reading comprehension

• Students who were ELL benefitted similarly in content, but needed more focus on academic language

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Teacher-delivered Middle School Instruction

• Teachers learned to improve explicit teaching of comprehension in U.S. History and Language Arts (Wanzek, Vaughn et al., 2013; Simmons et al., in press)

– Experimental classes > control classes– In Language Arts, higher-performing students

benefitted most– In History, students with disabilities also

performed better than SpEd in controls

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Web-based Reading Tutors

• Teaching text structure in Gr 5-7 (Meyer, Wijekumar et al., 2010-2011)

• Most effective innovation = elaborated feedback– Lowest-skilled readers also benefit from explicit

feedback on their errors– Varied degree of individualization in feedback

• The more individualized, the better students’ learning and comprehension

• Individualized feedback also improved middle school students’ attitudes!

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Professional Development

How do we bring research-based instructional practices to the classroom?

2 Contributions

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Contribution 14• Contribution 14: We can improve many teachers’ delivery of complex,

evidence-based instruction and interventions through developing their specialized knowledge and supporting consistent long-term implementation of evidence-based instructional practices.

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Contribution 15• Contribution 15: Combining multiple professional development strategies,

including coaching, linking student assessment data to instruction, using technology, and participating in communities of practice, can support teachers’ learning and implementation of research-based reading instruction. – E.g., Carlisle et al., 2011 – compared different combinations of PD. The

greatest improvement in teacher practice was observed when teachers received workshops, learning how to assess students, and the support of a literacy coach

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And Since the Synthesis Was Published

• New technologies for teachers• PD for CCSS

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Implications

Where do we go from here?

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Implications

• The first eight years of rigorous research funded by IES extended our knowledge about how to help students who have or are at risk for reading disabilities.

• The fifteen specific contributions that we identified through the published articles we reviewed reveal that IES-funded research has contributed in important ways to understanding how best to support students with or at risk for reading disabilities.

• During its relatively short history, IES has required rigorous standards regarding how scientific information is obtained, particularly through the use of randomized controlled field trials in schools.

• Through IES, research findings now inform decision-making in education in ways that were simply not considered prior to its inception and we have reason to believe that IES funded research will continue to contribute meaningful and important research findings to the professional and research fields that support the successful education of children.

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Next Steps from IES

• IES is in the process of identifying new areas to synthesize IES-funded research. Currently reviewing work in social/behavioral contexts to support academic learning and mathematics.