Graph Out Loud: Pre-Service Teachers' Data Decisions and Interpretations of CBM Progress Graphs.

Data-based instruction (DBI) is a process in which teachers use progress data to make ongoing instructional decisions for students with learning disabilities. Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a common form of progress monitoring, and CBM data are placed on a graph to guide decision-making. Despite the central role that graph interpretation plays in the successful implementation of DBI, relatively little attention has been devoted to investigating this skill among special education teachers. In the present study, we examined the data decisions of 32 pre-service special education teachers (29 females and 3 males). Participants viewed data presented sequentially on CBM progress graphs and used a think-aloud procedure to explain their reasoning each time they indicated they would make instructional changes. We also asked participants to make the same type of decisions in response to static CBM progress graphs depicting 10 weeks of data. Overall, there was inconsistency in pre-service teachers' responses related to when or why they would make an instructional change. Decisions were often influenced by graph-related features, such as variability in the data. Furthermore, responses suggested misunderstandings that led to premature instructional change decisions and reliance on individual data points.

Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 3-12 With Significant Word Reading Difficulties.

Most students with reading difficulties struggle to read words. We examined intervention effects for students with significant word reading difficulties (SWRD; standard score of 80 on at least one pretest measure of word reading), which includes individuals with or at risk for dyslexia. We investigated: (a) What are the effects of reading interventions for students in grades 3-12 with SWRD? and (b) What intervention features (i.e., instructional components and elements of dosage) are related to improved reading outcomes for the target population? A meta-analysis of 22 studies and 208 effect sizes revealed a statistically significant, positive, mean effect (g = 0.14, standard error [SE] = 0.04, p = .01, 95% confidence interval [CI]: [0.04, 0.23]) of interventions for the target population. Subset analyses revealed positive, statistically significant intervention effects on measures of pseudoword reading (g = 0.38, SE = 0.07, p = .0003, 95% CI [0.21, 0.54]) and pseudoword reading fluency (g = 0.29, SE = 0.09, p = .010, 95% CI [0.09, 0.49]). Moderator analyses yielded statistically significant, positive effects associated with increased total hours of intervention, ß = 0.003, SE = 0.0009, t(8.31) = 3.58, p = .007. Overall, findings indicate a need for interventions that improve generalized real-world reading for the target population.

Language and self-regulation: Interrelated sources of disparities in reading achievement and opportunities for reducing inequity.

Language and self-regulation develop bidirectionally, and they synergistically affect most aspects of acquiring reading proficiency. Children and youth from historically marginalized communities tend to have less expansive knowledge of academic vocabulary and dialect common to instruction and academic text (i.e., General American English), and limited self-regulation skills relevant to reading, compared to less-marginalized peers. In this article, we argue that language and self-regulation are factors in demographic-related reading opportunity gaps, and that in addition to improving students' access to high-quality explicit phonics instruction, understanding their interactive relationship offers opportunities for schools to reduce disparities in reading outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Relative Effects of Instruction Linking Word Reading and Word Meaning Compared to Word Reading Instruction Alone on the Accuracy, Fluency, and Word Meaning Knowledge of 4th-5th Grade Students With Dyslexia.

This within-subjects experimental study investigated the relative effects of word reading and word meaning instruction (WR+WM) compared to word-reading instruction alone (WR) on the accuracy, fluency, and word meaning knowledge of 4th-5th graders with dyslexia. We matched word lists on syllables, phonemes, frequency, number of definitions, and concreteness. We assigned half the words to WR and half to WR+WM. Word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, and word meaning knowledge were measured at pretest, immediately following each intervention session, and at posttest, administered immediately following the 12, 45-minute, daily instructional sessions. Compared to WR instruction alone, WR+WM significantly improved accuracy (d = 0.65), fluency (d = 0.43), and word meaning knowledge (d = 1.92) immediately following intervention, and significantly improved accuracy (d = 0.74), fluency (d = 0.84), and word meaning knowledge (d = 1.03) at posttest. Findings support the premise that word meaning knowledge facilitates accurate and fluent word reading, and that instruction explicitly integrating word reading and word meaning may be an effective support for upper elementary students with dyslexia.

When Treatment Adherence Matters: Interactions Among Treatment Adherence, Instructional Quality, and Student Characteristics on Reading Outcomes.

In this study, we examined the extent to which teachers' treatment adherence, instructional quality, and the interaction of these variables influenced eighth-grade students' content knowledge and reading comprehension. We examined treatment fidelity for students (n = 775) in classes randomly assigned to receive an evidence-based content area reading program called Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text. Results indicate that teachers' instructional quality was a statistically significant, positive predictor of student content knowledge and reading comprehension performance, whereas teachers' treatment adherence was not. Statistically significant interactions between treatment adherence and instructional quality were present, such that teachers' treatment adherence had a stronger impact on student learning outcomes when their overall instructional quality was low. Moderator analyses also revealed that students' pretest performance and English learner status influenced the effects of treatment adherence and instructional quality on student outcomes. These findings help elucidate the conditions under which Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text leads to improved outcomes, and more broadly, underscore the importance of carefully examining dimensions of treatment fidelity when testing the effects of treatment programs.

A cost-effectiveness analysis of four approaches to universal screening for reading risk in upper elementary and middle school.

Research on universal screening in reading has primarily focused on the psychometric adequacy of screening procedures without critically considering costs and value. Educators in upper elementary and middle school have access to a great deal of extant student achievement data, which makes the evaluation of the costs associated with collecting new data for screening purposes paramount. We conducted a retrospective analysis of four approaches to reading screening using cost-effectiveness analysis. Universal screening (i.e., aimswebPlus reading) and statewide reading test data were collected in a midsize school district in Texas for 19,417 students in Grades 4-8. We analyzed the total cost, the classification accuracy based on local cut-scores derived using receiver operating characteristic analysis, and the cost-effectiveness of each approach. Full implementation of the fall administration of aimswebPlus reading cost the district $55,199 in upper elementary and $76,832 in middle school. Both the use of prior-year state achievement test data alone (which represented no additional costs for screening) and the multivariate model (i.e., prior-year state achievement test data plus aimswebPlus) met typical recommendations for classification accuracy. A multiple-gate model that used prior-year state test data and fall aimswebPlus reading on a low-achieving subset of students produced the lowest cost-effectiveness ratio at $156 per additional student accurately classified in upper elementary and $181 in middle school, but this model also led to the highest number of false negatives. The use of aimswebPlus alone resulted in the highest costs and lowest classification accuracy. The results suggest that the use of prior-year statewide achievement test data alone in Grades 4-8 is an efficient approach to universal screening for reading risk that may allow schools to shift resources from screening to other educational priorities.

The influence of student engagement on the effects of an inferential reading comprehension intervention for struggling middle school readers.

Although many students benefit from evidence-based reading comprehension interventions, not all students will exhibit adequate response. Moderation analysis provides a statistical approach to examine for whom and under what conditions interventions are most effective. Conducted within a parent project, which investigated the effects of an inferential reading comprehension intervention, the current study examined factors related to the deployment of students' attention as well as language status that might be associated with differential response to intervention. Sixty-six struggling middle school readers were randomly assigned to a computerized version of the intervention, a teacher-led version, or business-as-usual (BaU) control instruction. The influence of language status (i.e., English Learner status) and pre-intervention levels of mind-wandering, anxiety, and mindset on the effects of the inferential reading comprehension intervention were examined. There were no moderator effects for the teacher-led group compared to the BaU control. Conversely, anxiety, mind-wandering, and language status moderated the effects of the computer-led intervention for some reading and inference-making outcomes. The computer-led intervention was associated with improved inference-making for students with higher levels of self-reported anxiety and mind-wandering. In contrast, the computer-led intervention was less beneficial than BaU instruction for English learners. Findings are discussed with respect to how these factors might be relevant for interpreting the effects of interventions for struggling middle school readers in general, and for English learners in particular. The findings also point to the importance of considering the characteristics of both student and instructional features in the creation and testing of reading comprehension interventions.

The Differential Importance of Component Skills on Reading Comprehension Test Performance Among Struggling Adolescent Readers.

Reading comprehension tests vary in format and characteristics, which may influence the extent to which component skills are involved in test performance. With students in Grades 6 to 8 with reading difficulties, dominance analyses examined the differential importance of component reading and language skills (word- and text-reading fluency, vocabulary, listening comprehension, and working memory) on several standardized tests of reading comprehension: The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, 4th edition (GMRT), Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation, Gray Oral Reading Test, 5th edition (GORT-5), and the Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension (TOSREC). Students' word- and text-reading fluency skills were generally the most dominant predictors of performance on most reading comprehension tests, especially those with a time limit (GMRT and TOSREC). Listening comprehension was most important on the GORT-5, a test in which students read passages orally and listen to questions read by an examiner. Working memory was the least important component skill across the reading comprehension tests. Overall, results were consistent with previous work indicating that reading comprehension measures vary with regard to the skills or knowledge sources that are most important for test performance and extend these findings to struggling adolescent readers. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Growth on sublexical fluency progress monitoring measures in early kindergarten and relations to word reading acquisition.

Fluency with skills that operate below the word level (i.e., sublexical), such as phonemic awareness and alphabetic knowledge, may ease the acquisition of decoding skills (Ritchey & Speece, 2006). Measures of sublexical fluency such as phoneme segmentation fluency (PSF), letter naming fluency (LNF), and letter sound fluency (LSF) are widely available for monitoring kindergarten reading progress, but less is known about the relative importance of growth in each skill across the early months of formal reading instruction and their relation to subsequent decoding acquisition. With a sample of kindergarten students at risk for reading difficulties, this study investigated the extent to which initial status and growth in PSF, LNF, and LSF, administered on a progress-monitoring basis during the fall of kindergarten, were differentially predictive of word reading fluency skills at mid-year and growth across the second half the school year. We used two different fluency-based progress monitoring measures of word reading across the spring, one consisting entirely of phonetically regular consonant-vowel-consonant words, and the other that included phonetically regular and irregular words that varied in length. Results indicated that although initial status and fall growth in all sublexical fluency measures were positively associated with subsequent word reading, LSF across the fall of kindergarten was the strongest overall predictor of mid-year level and growth on both word reading measures, and unique in its prediction over the effects of LNF and PSF. Results underscore the importance of letter-sound knowledge for word reading development, and provide additional evidence for LSF as a key index of progress for at-risk learners across the early months of formal reading instruction.

Mentor Support Provisions Scale: Measure dimensionality, measurement invariance, and associations with adolescent school functioning.

Mentoring relationships can have important effects on adolescents' psychosocial and academic outcomes; however, the transactions within mentoring relationships that may account for impact on psychosocial and academic outcomes are not well understood. This study investigated the psychometric properties of the Mentor Support Provisions Scale (MSPS), a tool for assessing the types of support that mentors provide. Exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses were used to determine measure dimensionality. Findings indicated acceptable fit with a three-factor structure: Academic Support, Intimacy, and Warmth. The MSPS was found to have scalar invariance; thus, factor loadings and intercepts are the same across student sex and ethnic groups (e.g., White, Hispanic, and Black). In structural equation modeling analyses, the three latent factors predicted academic engagement and reading and math achievement, above baseline scores. Research and practical uses of the MSPS are discussed.

Advancing Stage 2 Research on Measures for Monitoring Kindergarten Reading Progress.

Although several measures exist for frequently monitoring early reading progress, little research has specifically investigated their technical properties when administered on a frequent basis with kindergarten students. In this study, kindergarten students ( N = 137) of whom the majority was receiving supplemental intervention for reading skills were monitored using Letter Sound Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, Word Reading Fluency, Nonsense Word Fluency, Highly Decodable Passages, and Spelling on a biweekly basis between February and May. Acceptable reliability was observed for all measures. Analyses of slope validity using latent growth models, latent change score models, and slope differences according to level of year-end achievement indicated that the relation of slope to overall reading skills varied across the measures. A suggested approach to kindergarten students' reading progress is offered that includes Letter Sound Fluency and a measure of word-reading skills to provide a comprehensive picture of student growth toward important year-end reading outcomes.

Predictive Validity of Curriculum-Embedded Measures on Outcomes of Kindergarteners Identified as At Risk for Reading Difficulty.

This study examined the predictive validity of formative assessments embedded in a Tier 2 intervention curriculum for kindergarten students identified as at risk for reading difficulty. We examined when (i.e., months during the school year) measures could predict reading outcomes gathered at the end of kindergarten and whether the predictive validity of measures changed across the kindergarten year. Participants consisted of 137 kindergarten students whose reading development was assessed four times from October to February. Measures aligned with content taught in the curriculum and assessed a range of phonologic, alphabetic, and word-reading skills. Results from structural equation modeling indicate that 36.3% to 65.2% of the variance was explained on the latent decoding outcome and 62.0% to 86.8% on the latent phonological outcome across the four time points. Furthermore, the predictive validity of specific skills increased over the kindergarten year, with more complicated tasks (e.g., word segmentation) becoming more predictive at subsequent measurement occasions. Results suggest that curriculum-embedded measures may be viable tools for assessing and predicting reading performance.

Assessing spelling in kindergarten: further comparison of scoring metrics and their relation to reading skills.

Early reading and spelling development share foundational skills, yet spelling assessment is underutilized in evaluating early reading. This study extended research comparing the degree to which methods for scoring spelling skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with reading skills measured at the same time as well as at the end of first grade. Five strategies for scoring spelling responses were compared: totaling the number of words spelled correctly, totaling the number of correct letter sounds, totaling the number of correct letter sequences, using a rubric for scoring invented spellings, and calculating the Spelling Sensitivity Score (Masterson & Apel, 2010b). Students (N=287) who were identified at kindergarten entry as at risk for reading difficulty and who had received supplemental reading intervention were administered a standardized spelling assessment in the spring of kindergarten, and measures of phonological awareness, decoding, word recognition, and reading fluency were administered concurrently and at the end of first grade. The five spelling scoring metrics were similar in their strong relations with factors summarizing reading subskills (phonological awareness, decoding, and word reading) on a concurrent basis. Furthermore, when predicting first-grade reading skills based on spring-of-kindergarten performance, spelling scores from all five metrics explained unique variance over the autoregressive effects of kindergarten word identification. The practical advantages of using a brief spelling assessment for early reading evaluation and the relative tradeoffs of each scoring metric are discussed.

Monitoring early first-grade reading progress: a comparison of two measures.

This study compared the validity of progress monitoring slope of nonsense word fluency (NWF) and word identification fluency (WIF) with early first-grade readers. Students (N = 80) considered to be at risk for reading difficulty were monitored with NWF and WIF on a 1-2 week basis across 11 weeks. Reading skills at the end of first grade were assessed using measures of passage reading fluency, real and pseudoword reading efficiency, and basic comprehension. Latent growth models indicated that although slope on both measures significantly predicted year-end reading skills, models including WIF accounted for more variance in spring reading skills than NWF, and WIF slope was more strongly associated with reading outcomes than NWF slope. Analyses of student growth plots suggested that WIF slope was more positively associated with later reading skills and discriminated more clearly between students according to successful or unsuccessful year-end reading outcomes. Although both measures may be used to monitor reading growth of at-risk students in early first grade, WIF may provide a clearer index of reading growth. Implications for data-based decision-making are discussed.