Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties

David A. Kilpatrick, Alan S. Kaufman, Nadeen L. Kaufman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118845288
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Investigación y metodología en psicología

Practical, effective, evidence-based reading interventions that change students' lives

Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties is a practical, accessible, in-depth guide to reading assessment and intervention. It provides a detailed discussion of the nature and causes of reading difficulties, which will help develop the knowledge and confidence needed to accurately assess why a student is struggling. Readers will learn a framework for organizing testing results from current assessment batteries such as the WJ-IV, KTEA-3, and CTOPP-2. Case studies illustrate each of the concepts covered. A thorough discussion is provided on the assessment of phonics skills, phonological awareness, word recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Formatted for easy reading as well as quick reference, the text includes bullet points, icons, callout boxes, and other design elements to call attention to important information.

Although a substantial amount of research has shown that most reading difficulties can be prevented or corrected, standard reading remediation efforts have proven largely ineffective. School psychologists are routinely called upon to evaluate students with reading difficulties and to make recommendations to address such difficulties. This book provides an overview of the best assessment and intervention techniques, backed by the most current research findings.

• Bridge the gap between research and practice
• Accurately assess the reason(s) why a student struggles in reading
• Improve reading skills using the most highly effective evidence-based techniques

Reading may well be the most important thing students are taught during their school careers. It is a skill they will use every day of their lives; one that will dictate, in part, later life success. Struggling students need help now, and Essentials of Understanding and Assessing Reading Difficulties shows how to get these students on track.

Chapter One
Introduction

The Unfair Race

Picture yourself attending a high school track meet. The athletes are lining up for the 1,600-meter race, which requires four laps around the track. There are six lanes on the track, and you notice that in one lane is a set of high hurdles and in another lane is a set of low hurdles. The other four lanes have no hurdles. When the gun sounds, the runners in the two lanes with the hurdles are soon behind the other runners and continue to get farther behind as the race progresses. The runner in the lane with the high hurdles is the farthest behind. As the race goes on, the gap widens. There is almost no likelihood that either of these runners will catch up with the others. The whole event seems surreal and quite unfair—even painful to watch.

This scenario has close parallels to the development of reading skills among our K–12 students. The top two-thirds of students, as represented by the four lanes without hurdles, take off down the track and have nothing hindering them from running. The bottom third has differing degrees of hindrance based upon how high their hurdles are. Just as one-third of the runners had hurdles, the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicates that each year, about 30% to 34% of fourth graders in the United States read below a basic level.

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Don't Forget

This volume is not about helping children become more efficient hurdlers. It is about removing the hurdles from the track.

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Efforts to help these weaker readers have been geared toward teaching them how to jump more efficiently over their hurdles. This volume is not about helping children become better and more efficient hurdlers. It is about removing the hurdles from the track before the race even starts. It is also about removing hurdles still ahead of the runners once the race has begun.

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Don't Forget

The goal of this book is to open up the vast and extensive world of empirical research into reading acquisition and reading disabilities in order to capitalize on the most useful findings for assessing reading difficulties and for designing highly effective interventions.

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The goal of this book is to open up the vast and extensive world of empirical research into reading acquisition and reading disabilities. Surprisingly, this large and heavily grant-funded scientific endeavor has not had sufficient impact on the fields of general education, literacy education, special education, and school psychology (see more on this later in the chapter). Yet school psychologists, literacy specialists, and special educators play a large role in evaluating children with reading difficulties. They are called upon to make recommendations about how to best address the learning needs of poor readers. This volume will provide educational professionals with the tools and knowledge they need to pinpoint the reasons why a given student is struggling in reading. It will also provide recommendations that result in highly successful interventions.

The Importance of Reading

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of reading for success in school and in life. Reading is essential for all academic subjects. Science and social studies require textbook reading. Many math tests, including state-level assessments, require students to read word problems. Poor reading virtually guarantees poor writing skills. Art, music, health, and physical education classes sometimes require background reading and written projects. As a result, reading affects a student's entire academic experience. How well children succeed in school affects their future endeavors in life (Miller, McCardle, & Hernandez, 2010). While we all know of cases to the contrary, it is normally the students who do well in school who are more likely to go to college and have greater career opportunities.

Poor reading can also affect school behavior (McGee, Prior, Williams, Smart, & Sanson, 2002; Morgan, Farkas, Tufis, & Sperling, 2008; Tomblin, Zhang, Buckwalter, & Catts, 2000; Willcutt et al., 2007). Many children who are poor readers display behavior problems. There appears to be a two-way relationship between poor reading and at least some of the behavior problems we see in schools (Morgan et al., 2008). Significant reading difficulties appear to put students in later elementary school at a higher risk for depression (Maughan, Rowe, Loeber, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 2003). Students who are poor readers in third grade are 4 times more likely to become high school dropouts compared to skilled readers (Hernandez, 2012). At a 30-year follow-up of over 1,300 adults who had been diagnosed with a reading disability at age 7, McLaughlin and colleagues found that these adults were less likely to have obtained post–high school degrees and were more likely to attain lower levels of income than those who were average or better readers at age 7 (McLaughlin, Speirs, & Shenassa, 2014).

School districts are fully aware of the impact reading has on students. Millions of dollars are spent every year on general educational and special educational reading remediation. Despite this, poor readers generally remain poor readers (Jacobson, 1999; Maughan, Hagell, Rutter, & Yule, 1994; Morgan et al., 2008; Protopapas, Sideridis, Mouzaki, & Simos, 2011; Short, Feagans, McKinney, & Appelbaum, 1986; Sparks, Patton, & Murdoch, 2014). Studies of both general and special educational remedial reading indicate that these efforts have not been effective at normalizing reading performance (Bentum & Aaron, 2003; Jacobson, 1999; Moody, Vaughn, Hughes, & Fischer, 2000; Rashotte, McPhee, & Torgesen, 2001; Swanson & Vaughn, 2010; Torgesen, Rashotte, Alexander, Alexander, & MacPhee, 2003).

It would be easy to conclude from this that there is a substantial portion of students, perhaps due to neur...