Reading comprehension is a fundamental and indispensable skill for academic achievement and daily functioning. Sadly, a significant number of children and youth, particularly those diagnosed with learning disabilities (LD), encounter difficulties in acquiring this vital capability. Thankfully, several well-established approaches exist to offer…

Reading Recovery, a meaning-based reading program designed for young children at risk of reading failure, is widely implemented across the United States. We discuss the recent Reading Recovery $45 million four-year i3-funded scaleup study that was designed to "cover the expansion of Reading Recovery around the U.S." (May, Sirinides,…

In the United States, approximately 2.5 million students are diagnosed as having a learning disability and the majority of those children are placed in special education because of an inability to read as expected. As a result of this diagnosis, these children may be placed in special education classrooms--classrooms that are separate from the…

The purpose of this article was twofold: (1) to explore the feasibility of the regression discontinuity design (RDD) in response-to-intervention implementation research and (2) to expand upon the limited research on vocabulary instruction for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading failure due to limited vocabularies. This pilot study…

"Fundations"[R] is a prevention and early-intervention program designed to help reduce reading and spelling failure. The program is aimed at students in grades K-3 and involves daily 30-minute lessons which focus on carefully-sequenced skills that include print knowledge, alphabet awareness, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness,…

Many schools in the United States use the IQ-achievement discrepancy method to identify children with learning disabilities (a significant split between their intelligence and their achievement skills). Unfortunately struggling students who are not identified by this method remain in the regular education setting with no additional supports and…

A debate exists in the research community about replacing the traditional IQ/achievement discrepancy method for learning disability identification with a "response-to-intervention model". This new assessment paradigm uses a student's level of improvement with small-group or individual programming to determine a possible need for…

Reynolds and Wheldall reviewed research relating to Reading Recovery (RR) and concluded that "RR has provided an excellent model in demonstrating how to plan, promote, and implement an intervention across an educational system and how to design a professional development programme" (2007, p. 218). They balanced this praise with concerns about the…

This study investigated the psychometric properties of the kindergarten Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI; Texas Education Agency and the University of Texas System, 2004-2006) Mid-Year screeners with a sample of 180 students. The TPRI screeners were designed to determine which students are not at risk for later reading failure. Results…

Oral reading fluency, which includes the effortless and smooth oral production of text, is an essential part of deriving meaning from text. Fluency is a particularly important skill in upper elementary school grades when students are exposed to higher level reading materials. The authors evaluated the effects of a repeated readings intervention…

The policies underlying the specific learning disability (SLD) regulations in the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) are analyzed. The analysis focuses on the Response-to-Intervention (RTI) provision ("if the child responds to scientific, research-based intervention") as a diagnostic model,…

The importance of early identification of children at risk for reading failure is clearly established in the literature. The purpose of this longitudinal retrospective study was to further define the relationship between the development of prereading skills and later reading outcome in two groups of children; a group of reading-disabled children…

The purpose of this study was to determine if phonemic awareness skills improved for first grade students classified as at-risk whose teachers used the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (LiPS; Lindamood & Lindamood, 1998). Students' scores on a Kindergarten screening tool (Learning Disabilities Working Committee-LDWC, 2005) were compared to…

In this article, the authors discuss aspects of Response to Intervention (RTI) that appear to be promising for the field of reading, and those that they view as problematic. Unlike many earlier models of innovation in special education service delivery, there is some research indicating promise. Most of that research has been conducted with…

Research was conducted to ascertain if a combined repeated reading and question generation intervention was effective at improving the reading achievement of fourth through eighth grade students with learning disabilities or who were at risk for reading failure. Students were assigned to a treatment or control group via a stratified random…