The purpose of the current study was to determine the extent to which practicing keywords increased word recognition, reading fluency and comprehension for students with intellectual disability (ID). The dependent measures included word recognition (i.e., the percentage of previously unknown keywords read correctly in the given text), reading…

Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Skills is a web-based assessment system published by Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA). The test publishers purport that MAP Skills provides information about essential K-8 building blocks in Language Usage, Mathematics, Reading Comprehension, and Vocabulary to quickly assess student progress toward…

This study examined the classification accuracy for subskill mastery measures administered in mathematics for students in kindergarten and Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 at fall (n = 564) and winter (n = 602) screening. In addition, response to classwide math intervention was examined as another layer of screening for students in kindergarten and Grades 1,…

Incremental rehearsal (IR) is a flashcard technique that has produced strong effects for a variety of outcomes including word recognition. We utilized theory-based modifications to IR to enhance maintenance and generalization of sight words. We utilized a within-subjects design in which 41 participants in 2nd and 3rd grade were taught seven…

A skill-by-treatment interaction (STI) isolates skill deficits and manipulates conditions to match them to student needs. Based on the learning hierarchy, preintervention scores can help predict which intervention will be most successful for an individual student. This study compared the efficacy of a modeling and practice-based decoding…

Universal screening is useful in the early identification of behavioral and emotional concerns, but teacher-related variance can potentially influence screening scores and resulting decisions. The current study examined the extent to which burnout and self-efficacy as teacher-level variables accounted for variance in universal screening scores.…

The amount of information that students can successfully learn and recall at least 1 day later is called an acquisition rate (AR) and is unique to the individual student. The current study extended previous drill rehearsal research with word recognition by (a) using students identified with a learning disability in reading, (b) assessing set sizes…

The current study used the learning hierarchy/instructional hierarchy phases of acquisition and fluency to predict intervention effectiveness based on preintervention reading skills. Preintervention reading accuracy (percentage of words read correctly) and rate (number of words read correctly per minute) were assessed for 49 second- and…

Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) provide instruction and intervention to all students in schools. However, when many students within a setting demonstrate reading difficulties, there is likely a tier 1 problem which makes it infeasible to implement tier 2 or tier 3 interventions with large numbers of students due to limited resources. The…

The purpose of this study was to examine: (1) the effect of a reading intervention based on reading need compared to a mismatched behavior intervention; and (2) the effect of an academic behavior intervention based on behavior need in comparison to a mismatched reading intervention. Six students took part in the multiple baseline study. Half of…

This study compared the reading growth of students with and without learning disabilities, and students with and without reading deficits in response to tier 2 reading interventions within a response-to-intervention framework. Participants were 499 second- and third-grade students in six urban schools. Students who scored at or below the 10th…

The instructional hierarchy offers a useful framework for targeting academic interventions. Within this framework, the accuracy with which a student reads might function as an indicator that the student should receive an intervention that focuses either on accuracy or on fluency. The current study examined whether the instructional level for…

Teachers can potentially address reading comprehension deficits in a content area, such as science, by using the students in their classrooms as resources. We examined the effects of a class-wide partner reading intervention with science reading materials on a measure of content comprehension skills. A total of 65 fourth-grade students and 61…

Students with dyslexia demonstrate reading difficulty in early literacy skills (e.g., phonemic awareness, word recognition, decoding), and administering screeners is a necessary step to implement effective intervention. There are several commonly used reading screeners, but the decision accuracy and predictive value between them varies. In the…

Phonemic awareness (PA) includes rhyming, phoneme isolation, blending, and segmenting, but the relative importance of each component is unclear, especially for students from high-poverty areas. The current study examined the relationship between components of PA and an early literacy measure among 192 kindergarten students from high-poverty urban…