This study investigated how measures of decoding, fluency, and comprehension in middle school students overlap with one another, whether the pattern of overlap differs between struggling and typical readers, and the relative frequency of different types of reading difficulties. The 1,748 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students were oversampled…

No studies have investigated the cognitive attributes of middle school students who are adequate and inadequate responders to Tier 2 reading intervention. We compared students in Grades 6 and 7 representing groups of adequate responders (n = 77) and inadequate responders who fell below criteria in (a) comprehension (n = 54); (b) fluency (n = 45);…

In this study, the authors examined the validity of a holistically scored retell within a confirmatory factor analysis framework by comparing the fit of a three-factor model of reading with the data from a diverse sample of seventh and eighth graders. The final model demonstrated adequate fit, [chi][squared](32) = 97.316; comparative fit index =…

We describe findings from a series of longitudinal studies utilizing a response to intervention framework implemented over 3 years with students in Grades 6 through 8 with reading disabilities and poor reading comprehension. Students were identified based on reading comprehension scores in Grade 5 (n = 1,083) and then randomized to treatment or…

This study reports the effectiveness of a year-long, small-group, tertiary (Tier 3) intervention that examined 2 empirically derived but conceptually different treatments and a comparison condition. The researchers had randomly assigned all students to treatment or comparison conditions. The participants were seventh- and eighth-grade students…