Tailoring Literacy Instruction to Special Education Populations

1
Tailoring Literacy Instruction to Special
Education Populations

• Sylvia Linan-Thompson
• Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts
• The University of Texas, Austin

2
Current Situation

• More than 8 million students in grades 4-12
  struggle with reading (U. S. DOE, 2003).
• Only 32 of 8th graders are proficient readers
  (NCSE, 2003).
• 8.7 million 4-12 graders are unable to read and
  comprehend texts
• American 11th graders placed very close to the
  bottom in international comparisons (2002)

3
In addition to academic problems,

• student that struggle with reading are
• more likely to be inattentive in class
• (Imai,
  et al. 1992)
• and
• more likely to exhibit antisocial behavior
• (Vanderstay,2006)

4
Students that struggle are not all alike

• Lowest performing students
• Two or more grades behind
• Less than two grade levels behind

5
Why do students struggle?

• They
• have a learning disability
• entered school poorly prepared to learn to read
• have attended school sporadically
• gave general low learning ability
• and
• the instruction they have received has not been
  sufficiently powerful!

6
Most interventions for struggling students

• are of insufficient intensity
• are weak in word study skills
• offer little or no direct instruction in
  comprehension strategies

7
These students are not unaware of their
challenges.

• Im not good at reading. It takes me a while and
  when I am reading a book, it takes me more than
  six times and then I still forget what Ive read.
  Its very hard to keep focused and remember where
  I was. Even when I remember, I read so slow that
  I never finish my work. There are still lots of
  words I cannot pronounce. I cant remember how to
  sound out the words.
• (McCray, Vaughn, Neal, 2001)

8
Given that,

• the current IDEA definition includes in its
  criteria for determining that a child has a SLD
  The child does not achieve commensurate with his
  or her age and ability levels in one or more of
  the areas listed in paragraph (a)(2) or this
  section, if provided with learning experience
  appropriate for the childs age and ability

9

• and does not include learning problems that are
  primarily the result of environmental,
  cultural,or economic disadvantages, the focus
  must be on the quality of instruction that
  students receive.

10
What do states have to do?

• Provide students intensive, focused, literacy
  instruction and tutoring.
• Instruction should teach students
• The knowledge and skills required to read unknown
  words in text
• How to accurately read words by sight
• How to understand the meaning of the words they
  will be encountering
• How to think about meaning or comprehend

11

• Students that receive this type of instruction,
  graduate from high school and attend college in
  significantly greater numbers than those that do
  not.

12
How do you accomplish this?

• Institute policy that will ensure that students
  that are performing below level receive the
  instruction that they need.

13
Response to Intervention

• The practice of providing high-quality
  instruction or intervention matched to student
  need,
• monitoring progress frequently to make decisions
  about changes in instruction or goals and
• applying child response data to educational
  decisions.
• (Response to Intervention Policy considerations
  and implementation, 2005)

14
RTI

• Is a comprehensive, multi-tiered school-wide
  instruction model that is applied to decisions in
  general, remedial, and special education.

15
Basic Components

• Use of scientifically based instruction
• Instruction and intervention
• Use of on-going monitoring of student progress
• Access and participation in the general curriculum

16
Policy Considerations

• How will the SEA support the implementation of
  RTI?
• What changes to the current state-level
  infrastructure will be needed to implement RTI?

17
How will the SEA support the implementation of
RTI?

• Promote Statewide Initiatives
• That support school-wide models of RTI
• Include professional development

18
Procedures

• Organization and leadership
• Determine who will be responsible for organizing
  and coordinating the development of the RTI
  effort at the state level.
• Identify leaders from general and special
  education to lead the development and
  implementation.

19
Procedures

• Organization and leadership
• Identify the language that will be used to
  communicate the model
• Identify field-based advisory groups to guide and
  support state planning efforts

20
Policy

• Determine if any current state policies support
  any or all of the components of RTI
• You will need policy to
• Support and evaluate instruction using
  scientifically based practices
• Support the expansion of general education
  interventions for diverse learners
• Support and guide the use of assessments at all
  levels
• Support the use of student data for successive
  tiers

21
What changes to the current state-level
infrastructure will be needed to implement RTI?

• Establish infrastructure to support the
  development of a plan of action with timelines
  and personnel to rollout the process.
• Identify additional resources needed to build or
  refine an infrastructure.

22
Procedures

• Identify universal interventions that already
  exist.
• Identify current structures within general
  education support the implementation of
  interventions in Tiers 1 and 2.
• Identify support structures for decision making
  by special education personnel.

23
Procedures

• Plan for the fiscal, personnel, training, and
  evaluation support at the local level.
• Identify information and knowledge that will be
  incorporated in pre-service programs.
• Establish research and evaluation processes to
  examine initiative.

24
Bottom Line

• All educators in an educational setting need to
  share responsibility for the literacy acquisition
  of all students.