Two studies were conducted to examine the effects of Tier 2 and Tier 3 mathematics interventions on students with mathematics learning difficulties. In the first study, the work of Bryant et al. was replicated and expanded upon by documenting the sustained effects of a Tier 2 mathematics intervention on mathematics performance by second graders.…

According to national mathematics standards, algebra instruction should begin at kindergarten and continue through elementary school. Most often, teachers address algebra in the elementary grades with problems related to solving equations or understanding functions. With 789 second-grade students, we administered: (1) measures of calculations and…

The goal of the present study was to test three competing hypotheses about the nature of comprehension problems of students who are poor in reading comprehension. Participants in the study were first, second, and third graders, totaling nine cohorts and over 425,000 participants in all. The pattern of results was consistent across all cohorts:…

This 4-year longitudinal research was designed to study special education determinations of students who participated in Tier 2 intervention in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model focused on reading across Grades 1-4. We compared identification rates for learning disabilities (LD) and student characteristics of 381 students the year prior to…

The purpose of the study was to examine differences in early numerical competencies, as well as subtraction skill, as a function of children's mathematics difficulty (MD) status: computational difficulty (CD), word problem-solving difficulty (PD), concurrent difficulty (CDPD), or neither difficulty (i.e., typically developing; TYP). Based on…

The Helping Early Literacy with Practice Strategies (HELPS) Program was developed by integrating eight evidence-based fluency-building instructional strategies into a systematic program that can be feasibly implemented and accessed for free by all educators. This study examined the effects of HELPS when implemented by teachers with low-performing…

Solving word problems is a difficult task for students at-risk for or with learning disabilities (LD). One instructional approach that has emerged as a valid method for helping students at-risk for or with LD to become more proficient at word-problem solving is using schemas. A schema is a framework for solving a problem. With a schema, students…

In this study, we compared methods to improve the decoding and reading fluency of struggling readers. Second-grade poor readers were randomly assigned to one of the two practice conditions within a repeated reading intervention. Both interventions were in small groups, were 20-28 min long, took place 2-4 days per week, and consisted of phonemic…

This longitudinal study investigated the academic and cognitive characteristics of persistent mathematics difficulty (MD-p) from first to fourth grade. Ninety-nine children were retrospectively categorized into one of three groups: MD-p, transient mathematics difficulty (MD-t), or typically developing. MD-p was defined as persistently low…

We examined the components of first (L1) and second language (L2) phonological processing that are related to L2 word reading and vocabulary. Spanish-speaking English learners (EL) were classified as average or low readers in grades 1 and 2. A large number of children who started out as poor readers in first grade became average readers in second…

Limited research has examined the skills of children with a reading disability (RD) and children with RD and a mathematics disability (MD). Even less research has examined the phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in these two groups of children and how these skills relate to reading and math achievement.…

Metacognition refers to knowledge about one's own cognition. The present study was designed to assess metacognitive skills that either precede or follow task engagement, rather than the processes that occur during a task. Specifically, we examined prediction and evaluation skills among children with (n= 17) or without (n= 179) mathematics learning…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between different text-leveling systems and reading accuracy and fluency in second-grade students with and without decoding difficulties. Two-hundred-forty-eight second-grade students, 44 identified as low achieving (LA) and 204 identified as average achieving (AA) in decoding skill,…

Socioeconomic gradients and growth-mixture model trajectories of word-reading achievement were examined from kindergarten to Grade 5 in all the children who entered kindergarten within a school district and started receiving literacy-intensive instruction from that point on. In kindergarten, the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and…

Development of English- and Spanish-reading skills was explored in a sample of 251 Spanish-speaking English-language learners from kindergarten through Grade 2. Word identification and reading comprehension developed at a normal rate based on monolingual norms for Spanish- and English-speaking children, but English oral language lagged…