A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Parents often ask us for the names of experts to evaluate their children or help them develop Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Often, these requests come from parts of the country with which we’re unfamiliar. In such situations, we generally make these suggestions:

• Check who teaches the relevant graduate courses at your local university. For example, if you want an expert to evaluate your child’s reading problems, check the university’s catalog and course schedule to see who teaches courses on the evaluation of reading problems. If you want an expert to evaluate your child’s problems with mathematics, check who teaches such courses. Call these experts (often professors) to get a sense of their personality, professionalism, values, availability, and fees. If they can’t offer their services, ask them for recommendations.
• Check if local universities have clinics that specialize in your child’s problem, such as a reading clinic, a learning disabilities clinic, a behavioral difficulties clinic, a counseling center.
• Review electronic databases of journal articles, such as EBSCO. Databases are often available through libraries. Search them for relevant terms, such as “reading disabilities + evaluation” if you’re seeking an expert to evaluate your child’s reading problems. Read several recent articles. Then call the authors of those you liked, even if they’re a thousand miles away. Briefly discuss their articles and your child’s difficulties; ask if they can recommend experts within 50-miles of your home. It’s a small world: After a few calls, you may get several names.
• Check book reviews on www.amazon.com and www.bn.com. If possible, read at least 10 reviews. Call the authors of the well-reviewed books. They may know experts near you.
• Ask parents of children with similar problems. Ask who they would recommend, would not recommend, and why. If they used the expert they’re recommending, and you think they would be willing, ask to see a copy of their expert’s report or the IEP she helped write. See if several people recommend the same expert.
• Ask your child’s doctors. If they make a recommendation, ask what experiences they had with the expert they’re recommending.

Once you have the names of experts, interview them. Assess their knowledge, openness, availability willingness to listen, and interest in helping. Ask about their fees. Ask to see samples of their reports or IEPs (with names omitted). Ask how they conduct evaluations or help to develop IEPs and how, if needed, they’ll follow up.

Before interviewing experts, learn what a quality evaluation or IEP should look like. For information on reading evaluations, read chapter 5 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com). For information on developing IEPs, read chapters 8 through 13.

Are these suggestions foolproof? No. But they can help you find experts who will make a positive difference in your child’s life.

If you have other ideas about finding experts, please put them in a comment on our blog. Your ideas may help many of our readers.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. (c) Reading2008 & Beyond                                       www.reading2008.com

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

In September, many parents will again realize that their children will struggle with reading. Their concerns may well be aggravated by the knowledge that their children face enormous frustration if they don’t become competent readers by the end of third grade. Children who struggle with reading in fourth grade tend to struggle throughout high school, increasing the likelihood that they’ll drop out.

If your child struggles with reading, you need to assess the situation—now. You need to answer questions like those below. This may be complicated. It may involve making formal, written requests of the school, getting private evaluations, hiring an advocate who knows a great deal about education laws and reading, meeting with teachers, observing your child’s program. However, not answering questions like these will make your life far more complicated and may well diminish your child’s chances for a high quality life.

1. Has a state-certified reading specialist (not a learning consultant) assessed your child with informal reading inventories and actual books? Has the specialist identified your child’s independent, instructional, and frustration reading and listening comprehension levels?
2. Did the reading assessment include diagnostic instruction and observations of your child in relevant classes and other learning situations?
3. Is the school instructing your child with materials in which he regularly achieves success and in which he is comfortable?
4. Does your child get extra, daily skilled reading instruction from a reading specialist that is carefully coordinated with the reading instruction he receives in his regular or special education classes?
5. Do your child’s teachers demonstrate enthusiasm about teaching him to learn to read and write?
6. Do your child’s teachers systematically follow a plan to sustain or improve high levels of motivation for reading and writing? Do they help your child link effort to achievement?
7. Does your child’s teachers systematically follow a plan to increase your child’s confidence about his ability to read and write?
8. Are reading and writing taught in carefully coordinated ways several times a week?
9. Are daily records kept of your child’s progress and is his program quickly modified if he experiences difficulty for more than 3 days in any 5 day period?
10. Does your child get knowledgeable, skilled, in-class support to help with reading and writing problems? Is this support delivered in a non-stigmatizing fashion?
11. Each day, does your child get numerous opportunities to read and discuss materials he finds interesting?
12. Is your child’s program balanced, so that all his reading and writing needs are addressed? This may include needs in word recognition, word analysis, fluency, vocabulary development, reading comprehension, study skills, homework, written composition, and listening comprehension?
13. Have you and the school agreed on a homework program that’s likely to help your child succeed rather than frustrate him?
14. Is your child likely to make more than a year’s growth in reading and writing for each year of remedial or extra instruction?
15. Has the school taught you how to help your child improve his reading and writing abilities, in ways that avoid conflict and enhance his confidence?

Many more such questions, along with guidance, are found in our book, Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com).

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. (c) Reading2008 & Beyond (www.reading2008.com)

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

For your child to succeed in middle and high school, he needs to become a proficient reader by the end of third grade. If not, his reading problems will likely persist through high school, causing other academic problems and increasing the likelihood of social and emotional problems; in adulthood, struggles with reading will diminish his chance of getting and holding a decent job. As the Annie E. Casey Foundation so clearly states:

Reading proficiently by the end of third grade … can be a make-or-break benchmark in a child’s educational development. Up until the end of third grade, most children are learning to read. Beginning in fourth grade, however, they are reading to learn, using their skills to gain more information in subjects such as math and science, to solve problems, to think critically about what they are learning, and to act upon and share that knowledge in the world around them. Up to half of the printed fourth-grade curriculum is incomprehensible to students who read below that grade level…. And three quarters of students who are poor readers in third grade will remain poor readers in high school…. Not surprisingly, students with relatively low literacy achievement tend to have more behavioral and social problems in subsequent grades and higher rates of retention in grade. The National Research Council asserts that “academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of third grade. A person who is not at least a modestly skilled reader by that time is unlikely to graduate from high school.” (Feister, 2010, p. 10)

If you suspect your child has reading problems, we urge you to:

• Quickly ask the school to have a reading specialist evaluate your child’s reading abilities. Ask for a reading program that mirrors the findings.
• Ask the school to frequently monitor your child’s progress in this or any other reading program. You do the same. If progress is poor, ask the school to investigate why and then modify his program to reflect their findings. Keep monitoring his progress.
• Consider hiring a reading specialist to help you work with the school to plan and monitor your child’s progress and to coordinate his in-school work with enjoyable in-home activities.
• Help your child succeed in activities that may involve some reading, but don’t depend on reading, such as sports, singing, and woodworking. Let him choose the activities.
• Read to your child regularly and frequently. Have him choose the books. Don’t question him about the books; instead, discuss them with him, as you would with friends.
• Spend about three minutes teaching your child one new listening vocabulary word every day or every other day. Relate the words to what he knows. Make the activities fun. Regularly use the words in conversation.
• Listen carefully to understand your child. Even if you disagree with him, make clear that you value him and his opinions.

For specific information on reading evaluations, read chapter 5 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com). For information on monitoring, chapter 7. And for his educational rights (and yours), chapters 9 through 13. But whatever you do, get the evaluation. Don’t delay.

Reference

Feister, L (2010). Early Warning: Why Reading at the End of Third Grade Matters. Baltimore, MD. Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. (c) Reading2008 & Beyond   www.reading2008.com

To learn more about Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds, a book for all parents of children with learning disabilities, go to www.reading2008.com, www.amazon.com, or www.bn.com. For a free chapter on reading evaluations, go to www.reading2008.com.

If you quote the chapter, please use this reference: Margolis, H., & Brannigan, G. G. (2009). Reading disabilities: Beating the odds. Voorhees, NJ: Reading2008 & Beyond (www.reading2008.com).

All the best,
Howard Margolis, Ed.D.
Gary G. Brannigan, Ph.D.

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Stephen M. Lange, Ph.D., Psychologist

Pine Ridge, SD

Perhaps you had this experience: You approached your child’s school about your kindergarten age child, expressing concern that he or she may have a learning disability. While sympathetic, your school’s psychologist, reading specialist, or other diagnostic expert responded that learning disabilities cannot be diagnosed until a child has been unable to succeed academically despite conscientious instruction. Several years later, you attended a meeting with your school’s multi-disciplinary team who explained that your child indeed does have a learning disability. Your emotions felt chaotic – a mixture of relief, worry, sorrow – and perhaps frustration or even anger that years had passed since you recognized that your child’s development was not typical, but rather different from his peers in subtle yet important ways.

It is a fact that learning disabilities cannot be diagnosed in early childhood. Unlike severe developmental disabilities, learning disabilities are mild neurocognitive deficits that cannot be easily distinguished from the broad range of typical early childhood development. However, it is also a fact that it is possible to identify children with increased risk for developing learning disabilities as elementary school students.

Children with increased risk for learning disabilities frequently share one or more of these characteristics:

• A mother, father, sister or brother with an Autistic Spectrum Disorders, ADHD, or Learning Disability
• Low birth weight, defined as a weight less than 2500 grams or 5.5 pounds
• Delayed speech—failure to combine two or more words into short phrases by 24 months of age
• A diagnosis of ADHD

These risk factors are associated with increased risk for learning disabilities because learning disabilities are the result of a developmental trajectory that starts before birth, and continues through adulthood.

As preschoolers, children at increased risk have trouble:

• Rhyming
• “Reading”—really recognizing—signs like Coke, McDonalds and other frequently occurring printed words
• Recognizing parts of books such as the cover, title
• Recognizing letters of his or her own name
• Quickly retrieving words, measured by asking a child to rapidly name a category such as “animals”

But what about prevention? Many of the home-based interventions that can reduce the risk of learning disabilities, especially reading disabilities, are parenting habits that apply to all children. The common element of all home—based interventions is the systematic exposure of children to rich, engaging, and expressive language. The best example of this is shared reading. When parents read to their children, books take on an added dimension of parental love and affection. Children hear models of reading that are more advanced than theirs. They begin to associate letters with sounds and words with meaning. Using books with predictable rhyme patterns and rhythms such as the Dr. Seuss books teaches the sound system of our language. Old fashioned entertainment, based on interaction between adults and children rather than video, fulfills a similar purpose. Telling stories about family history, sharing folk tales you learned as a child, playing word games such as 20-questions or I-Spy are ways parents teach their preschool “language apprentices.” Apprentices need teachers who listen well and listen patiently, and who can demonstrate good conversational skills such as taking turns speaking without interrupting. Helping children to play creatively, with other children, and with their imaginations is the oldest form of language and social skill training.

Professionals and parents can team-up to help children at risk for learning disabilities. Get Ready to Read! is a 10 minute screening tool to identify 4 year old children who need help with foundational language skills required to become readers. Children who are vulnerable can receive small group preventative instruction in letter recognition, letter-sound correspondences, rhyming, and segmenting and blending sounds. Even brief daily interventions by volunteers with minimal training appear to result in substantial growth in language skills. Speech and language therapists can be very adept at helping to remediate language delays in one to one or small group sessions.

In summary, while diagnosis of learning disabilities is not possible at young ages, parents, schools, healthcare professionals and others can be very attuned to delays in language development that confer increased risk for learning disabilities. As well, adults can focus particular attention to Low-Birth-Weight children, and children who were not talking by their second birthday, viewing them as especially vulnerable and needing developmental assessment. Parents, schools and speech and language therapists can team-up to help reduce risk for learning disabilities.

Reference

The National Center for Learning Disabilities. www.GetReadytoRead.org.

The Author

Stephen M. Lange, Ph.D. is a child and adoelscent psychologist and parent of two. He is a very grateful adult with ADHD. He can be contacted at smlangephd@gmail.com.

Edited by Howard Margolis, Ed.D.   www.reading2008.com

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis

Parents of struggling writers worry about their children’s struggle. They want to know, “How can I help my child?”

If your child struggles with writing, this post might help you and your child’s school identify the type of writing instruction your child needs. It will do this by first discussing critical but often ignored areas of diagnosis, then discussing a typical but inadequate diagnostic process that can do more harm than good, and finally suggesting actions you can take. A follow-up post will outline one effective, well-researched method for helping struggling writers improve their writing: Self-Regulated Strategy Development.

Important Areas of Diagnosis

Before designing a program to improve the writing of a struggling writer, parents, teachers, and, if the child is eligible for special education, his IEP or  Section 504 team, must know what the child won’t or can’t do that’s critical to becoming a successful writer. They need to ask and answer many questions, including these:

• Knowledge of Writing. Does the struggling writer understand what makes readers think one piece of writing is terrible and another excellent?  For example, does he understand why essay “A” is persuasive, essay “B” is not, why persuasive writing requires more than starting sentences with capitals, and what he must do to write a persuasive essay?
• Approach to Writing. Does the struggling writer just write down as much as he knows and then stop, or does he sculpt and continually refine and edit his writing so his audience finds it logical, coherent, relevant, interesting, informative, and easily understood?
• Advanced Planning. Does the struggling writer learn a great deal about his subject before writing about it, and does he then jot down and order the ideas he wants to discuss? Does he eliminate unnecessary ideas and provide support for the more important ones?
• Revision. Does the struggling writer do the three things that good writers do: revise, revise, and revise. As James Michener quipped, “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” Good writers cut excess, pick stronger verbs and nouns, provide more specific information. At best, without lots of revising, students can produce a draft that demands revision.
• Transcription. Can the struggling writer easily put his thoughts on paper or on a computer screen? If not, what’s blocking him? Is it difficulty with handwriting, word processing, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, sentence structure, memory, attention, organization, monitoring of  progress? Do psychological factors, such as fear of errors and memories of failure and ridicule, block efforts at transcription?
• Self-efficacy and Persistence. Does the struggling writer have enough confidence or self-efficacy in his ability to write? Self-efficacy is related to confidence. It refers to the struggling writer’s belief that he can succeed on a specific task, like writing a letter to President Obama. To this, I typically add the phrase, with moderate effort. If a struggling writer believes he can’t succeed, or that success will require him to continually make extraordinary, herculean efforts, he’s likely to resist writing or quit at the first sign of difficulty. Writing often requires persistence, and he may not have the self-efficacy to persist.
• Motivation. Does the struggling writer have enough motivation to stick with writing, a task that is often hard, complex, and lonely? Does he have the motivation to stick with  a writing task that can take lots of time, focus, preparation, juggling, and a willingness to continually criticize his work and try to improve it.  Unless the outcome is important, unless the struggling writer expects writing to get him what he wants—praise from his teacher, smiles from  his parents, admiration from classmates and other readers, an opportunity to paint with words, the satisfaction of creativity, a sense of mastery, an opportunity to share his thoughts—he may put little, if any effort into it. After all, if something is difficult for us and the reward unlikely or worthless to us, how many of us would work hard at it?
• Interest. Topics that interest children hold their attention and engage them far more than topics in which they’re uninterested. Although this stands to reason, it’s often ignored. So, part of diagnosis must reasonably ask, What interests this child? What does he want to write about? To whom does he want to write? When writing about a topic of personal interest, does his writing improve? When writing about a topic of personal interest, do his writing problems evaporate or lessen?

A Typical But Inadequate Diagnostic Process

To diagnose writing difficulties, many schools limit diagnosis to the administration of one or two standardized tests and report their test scores in long, impressive-looking columns of statistics. Typically, this tells us that the struggling writer has a writing problem, and not much else. But we knew this before testing. And often, the statistics must be viewed with skepticism as the tests themselves are often very limited, and thus their statistics can easily mislead. They can lead to programs that ignore his major problems.

Diagnosis of writing problems by the quick administration of limited tests also ignores the need for a writing expert to observe the struggling writer in a variety of writing situations. Otherwise, neither the school nor you will know what your child did, did not do, or struggled with to produce his writing samples. Alone, the samples will not tell anyone if your child rushed carelessly through the tasks or struggled mightily to succeed until his eyes filled with tears. As Marjorie Lipson and Karen Wixson assert:

It is extremely difficult (perhaps impossible) to evaluate students’ control of the writing process by considering only final products. Evaluation of student control … requires that students be observed, over time, in a classroom that values process writing and encourages author development. (p. 358)

Actions

If your child struggles with writing, meet with school personnel to discuss his writing problems. Ask for specifics, including samples of his writing, with written explanations detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the samples. Then, ask for a comprehensive evaluation that addresses each area we  listed as an “important area of diagnosis” and that observes your child writing in a variety of situations, for a variety of purposes, such as writing to a friend or requesting information from his Congressional Representative. (Follow your oral requests with written ones.)

Once the evaluations have been completed and you’ve met with your child’s teachers and other school personnel to discuss the results and to design a program of interventions—in all areas of need—request a written plan for monitoring his progress. As part of the plan, ask for weekly samples of his work. Ask school personnel to annotate the samples so you can understand the degree to which they show progress or difficulty. Rubrics, which are lists of standards that teachers use to evaluate writing, can make this more precise and easier for your child’s teachers and you. Typically, they identify what the teacher and school consider the characteristics of quality writing. You can find sample rubrics on our website, under resources (www.reading2008.com).

If you find yourself disagreeing with school personnel, read chapters 8 and 9 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Chapter 8 gives you strategies for Solving Conflicts; chapter 9 takes the mystery out of Special Education Evaluations and offers ideas for using them to help your child.

Resources

Santangelo, T., Harris, K. R., & Graham, S. (2007). Self-Regulated Strategy Development: A validated model to support students who struggle with writing. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal 5(1), 1-20. [Available from Learning Disabilities Worldwide, www.ldworldwide.org; the Important Areas of Diagnosis section is based on this article.]

Lipson, M. Y., & Wixson, K. K. (2009). Assessment and Instruction of Reading and Writing Difficulties: An Interactive Approach (4^th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond   www.reading2008.com

Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis

Parents and school personnel often make a critical mistake. They assume that instruction and related factors do little or nothing to cause or sustain reading disabilities, that all reading problems lie within the struggling reader. Thus, reading and other educational evaluations that reflect this assumption stress five things: testing, testing, testing, testing, and testing. They minimize or ignore everything else.

This produces a report, with recommendations that sometimes work, but too often fail. And too often, parents and school personnel, such as reading specialists, don’t quickly know if the report’s recommendations are failing. They don’t know if the struggling reader is drowning in a sea of failure. The reason is simple: parents, reading specialists, and other school personnel fail to frequently monitor progress. Thus, the struggling reader’s problems not only continue, but often worsen.

One way to help prevent this mess—this cascade of escalating failure—is for reading specialists and other educational evaluators to use a comprehensive model of evaluation that assesses the struggling reader’s current abilities, observes how he functions in his classes, assesses his success with modifications, adaptations, and different approaches to instruction, and frequently monitors his progress. Below is a simplified description of my favorite comprehensive model, the Assessment-Instruction Process (A-IP) of Marjorie Lipson and Karen Wixson. If you understand its components, you might help your child (or student) beat the odds of overcoming reading disabilities.

Initially Identify the Problem. To begin to precisely identify the struggling reader’s reading problems and to get the information needed to plan the initial assessment, the reading specialist should review the struggling reader’s records, observe him during reading and related instruction (e.g. social studies), and interview his teachers and, if needed, his parents.

Evaluate the Context. “Not infrequently, struggling readers’ reading and writing problems are exacerbated, if not actually caused, by contextual factors,” such as overly difficult or sterile reading materials, poor instructional strategies, inflexible grouping arrangements, and insufficient instructional time. To understand the influence of these and other contextual factors on reading proficiency, reading specialists need to use a variety of assessment procedures (e.g., observations, interviews, checklists). They should not limit the evaluation to testing.

Evaluate the Struggling Reader: Focus on Reading and Writing. To assess struggling readers’ reading abilities, their beliefs about them, and their interests, reading specialists should use a combination of informal assessment instruments and techniques and norm-referenced tests. To identify struggling readers’ instructional and frustration reading levels, specialists might have struggling readers read from an informal reading inventory and several textbooks. Specialists might also use Curriculum-Based Assessment (CBA) procedures to assess reading levels. If struggling readers have had appreciable difficulty using phonics, specialists might assess their phonemic awareness abilities (e.g., phoneme isolation, identity, categorization, blending, and segmentation). If struggling readers tend to withdraw from reading, specialists might informally assess self-efficacy [confidence] by discussing struggling readers’ perceptions of their ability to learn to read and to succeed on different reading tasks.

Evaluate the Match Between the Struggling Reader and the Context. Here, specialists compare the instructional context (e.g., materials, methods, physical arrangements) to struggling readers’ knowledge, abilities, and motivation. For example, if struggling readers need to read 3^rd-grade materials to develop fluency, but are regularly required to read 5^th-grade materials, specialists should recommend substituting 3^rd-grade materials. If, on typical reading and writing tasks, struggling readers have self-regulation difficulties—-problems setting immediate task goals and organizing time and effort to complete tasks—they may need shorter, less complicated tasks and direct instruction in setting goals, organizing time, and self-monitoring. Without changing such mismatches, progress is improbable.

Reflect, Make Decisions, and Plan. Here, specialists try to answer the critical question, “What is the primary source[s] of interference with learning or performance?” Specialists answer this question by reflecting on the previously gathered information. Because this step informs the next step—diagnostic teaching and instructional recommendations—it is, in a sense, the heart of the whole process. As such, specialists should deliberately dwell on their findings and reflect on how to validate their implications.

Identify a Better Match: Use Diagnostic Teaching. Witt and his colleagues asserted that “Trying to predict which interventions will work well for individual struggling readers has not been a fruitful endeavor. Therefore, we must test curricular modifications empirically.” This is exactly what diagnostic teaching does—test curricular modifications to increase the accuracy of instructional recommendations. In this step, specialists and teachers can vary instructional methods and alter levels of support. Even this, however, will not perfectly predict what will work with particular struggling readers. Thus, the results of diagnostic teaching must be integrated with the previously collected information about the struggling reader and the context to develop educated guesses, called a hypotheses, that better predicts what will work. And like all hypotheses, it must be tested. Accordingly, the next step—to monitor and modify instruction—is critically important. Without the monitoring of struggling readers’ progress, struggling readers often remain in ineffective programs that perpetuate reading problems.

Adapt Instruction: Continually Monitor Progress and Make Needed Modifications. “Continuous monitoring of instructional programs is absolutely essential, and adaptive teaching involving modifications in texts, tasks, and materials is desirable.” Information about how you and school personnel can monitor the progress of children with reading disabilities is found in chapter 7 of our book, Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com).

A question you may still have is, Why did I need to know this? To help your child (or student), you may have to know the parts of an effective reading evaluation. You may need to let the school know that you will not be satisfied with an evaluation that consists of tests, tests, and more tests, and little else. Having your child take a bunch of tests, no matter the statistics they produce, is unlikely to benefit him. When, in your request for a reading evaluation, you ask questions about and discuss the evaluation, you’re more likely to get one that increases your child’s chance of overcoming reading disabilities, of beating the odds against him. Knowing the parts and the process might also help you evaluate the evaluation. Much more information about getting and using reading evaluations is found in chapter 5 of our book, Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com).

Note: This column is adapted from Howard Margolis’ article, Struggling readers: What consultants need to know. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 2004, 15(2), 191-204. Full references for all the quotations in this column are listed in the article.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond

www.reading2008.com

References

Lipson, M. Y., & Wixson, K. K. (2003). Assessment and Instruction of Reading Disability: An Interactive Approach (3rd ed.). New York: Longman.

Margolis, H., & Brannigan, G. G. (2009). Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Voorhees, NJ: Reading2008 & Beyond (www.reading2008.com).

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

If your child has a reading disability, the school should monitor his progress frequently enough to prevent minor problems from becoming major ones, to prevent him from getting frustrated with work that’s too difficult, to prevent him from becoming bored with work he’s already mastered, to accelerate instruction when the data shows he can handle it comfortably.

In 2006, the federally-funded National Research Center on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD; Johnson et al.) recommended that schools assess the progress of students who need “extensive and intensive interventions” twice weekly (p. 2.4). Children with reading disabilities are part of this group.

The NRCLD also recommended that schools systematically chart the progress of these students and formally analyze it every three to four weeks. The reasons are straightforward:

• “To determine whether children are profiting appropriately from the instructional program
• To estimate rates of student improvement.” (p. 2.2)

Schools that fail to frequently monitor progress, or use poorly validated measures, won’t know if the progress of children with reading disabilities is excellent, fair, or terrible. This lack of frequent, valid monitoring information will condemn many children with reading disabilities to the wrong program for months, even years. This is akin to giving them the wrong medicine; it’s likely to cause great harm.

Many schools complain that it’s unrealistic to assess progress twice, even once weekly, and to assess the suitability of instruction once monthly. It takes too much time.

Consider this: How much time is wasted if a child stays in the wrong program for months or years? What are the consequences, for the child, his family, his teachers, his school, and society, if he continues to suffer from instruction that fails to teach him to read?

Also consider the time it takes to use reading probes to measure progress? Two of the most common probes, one-minute of oral reading and maze testing, in which children choose missing words in paragraphs, take only a few minutes to administer and score. After a little training, classroom assistants (paraprofessionals) can administer and score them.

For more help on monitoring, read chapter 7 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Also, look at the monitoring files on our website (www.reading2008.com). For twitter fans, follow Gary G. Brannigan at www.twitter.com/GaryBrannigan. And for those of you who want to comment on our posts—agree, disagree, or raise new questions—feel free to do so.

Resources

Johnson,  E.,  Mellard,  D.F.,  Fuchs,  D.,  &  McKnight,  M.A.  (2006). Responsiveness  to  Intervention (RTI): How to Do It. Lawrence, KS: National Research Center on Learning Disabilities.

Margolis, H., & Brannigan, G. G. (2009). Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Voorhees, NJ: Reading2008 & Beyond (www.reading2008.com).

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond    www.reading2008.com

It is critical to identify reading problems early so that appropriate intervention can begin. The facts speak for themselves: It takes four times as long to improve the skills of a struggling reader in the fourth grade as it does between mid-kindergarten and first grade. In other words, it takes two hours of intervention per day in the fourth grade to have the same impact as 30 minutes per day in first grade…. About 80 percent of students with learning disabilities have reading problems. (Spinelli, 2006, p. 220)

No one can tell you with certainty what reading program will work for your child. That’s why it’s critical that he get a reading evaluation that pinpoints his reading strengths and weaknesses and experiments with different reading methods and strategies to see what will likely succeed. Also, that’s why his teachers must carefully and frequently monitor his progress and modify instruction to reflect his difficulties and successes.

Trying to predict which interventions will work well for individual students has not been a fruitful endeavor. Therefore, we must test curricular [and programmatic] modifications empirically” (Witt et al., 1997).

Any attempt to describe how a child can learn important reading abilities that does not include diagnostic teaching is simply armchair thinking and of limited validity. (Kibby, 2009, p. 253)

If your child has reading disabilities (or other learning disabilities), he may suffer great emotional distress about his disabilities. This can scathe him for life. Thus, it’s critical to help him minimize or eliminate his distress and develop a positive outlook on learning and life. Teachers can help by making sure that he can, with moderate effort, succeed on all assignments. You might help by getting him counseling.

Underachievers in reading tend to have many emotional and social problems, and these are compounded as the child goes through school. Studies have shown that severe underachievement in reading appears to follow the individual all through life. (Rubin, 1997, p. 86).

Students who have serious reading difficulties often dis­play a fight or flight reaction to escape the stress caused by having to engage in a behavior that they find virtually impossible. Students who adopt a fight reaction are soon noticed because they engage in confrontational or disruptive behavior, or they may simply refuse to read. They may criticize the reading material, complaining that it’s a stupid book. They may say that reading is boring or deny having a reading problem. The student may refuse to begin an assignment, yell, or even have a tantrum…. The purpose behind the behavior is to avoid reading at all costs. For the aggressive problem reader, being chastised, kept after school, or sent to the principal‘s office is preferable to reading. (Gunning, 1998, p. 37)

Negative attitudes can be unlearned; that is, students who believe that they cannot learn to read successfully can begin to believe in themselves as readers. An environment where students come to expect success and where they value reading can help them overcome feelings of learned helplessness. (Rasinski & Padak, 2000, p. 38)

Children with reading disabilities tend to have small listening and speaking vocabularies; they don’t know the meaning of many of the words they hear and often lack the words they need to clearly explain their thoughts. Yet they need large vocabularies to understand what they hear, to express themselves successfully, and to comprehend what they read. Thus, without stressing your child, you should help him increase his vocabulary.

Speak to your child using your own words. Refrain from using simple language or talking to him like a baby. It’s okay that he doesn’t understand what every word means. Encourage him to let you know when he doesn’t understand, and explain the new word to him…. Read stories to the child, and encourage him to read. Even children’s books can help to increase [a] child’s vocabulary. Read stories that are slightly above your child’s level, exposing him to new words…. Ask your child for ideas [about] what a word might mean based on its context. Talk them through it to help figure it out.  (www.ehow.com)

References

Ehow.com: http://www.ehow.com/how_2191407_increase-childs-vocabulary.html

Gunning, T. G. (1998). Assessing and correcting reading and writing difficulties. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, p. 37

Kibby, M. W. (2009). Why is the school psychologist involved in the evaluation of struggling readers? Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 19, 248-258, p. 253.

Rasinski, T., & Padak, N. (2000). Effective reading strategies: Teaching children who find reading difficult (2^nd ed). Columbus, OH: Merrill, p. 38

Rubin, D. (1997). Diagnosis and correction in reading instruction (3^rd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon, p. 86

Spinelli, C. G. (2006). Classroom Assessment for Students in Special and General Education (2^nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall, p. 220.

Witt, J. C., Elliott, S. N., Daly, E. D., III, Gresham, F. M., & Kramer, J. J. (1997). Assessment of At-Risk and Special Needs Children (2^nd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, p. 51.

HM©Reading2008 & Beyond

Guest Column by Patrick McCabe, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, St. John’s University

Lucinda (not real name) is a fourth grader who does well in class.  She likes to attend school, does her homework, and pays attention. But there is one thing that she does not like about school: standardized tests!

As you might imagine, this is not a favorite activity for either children or teachers. Who can blame them! Who wants to take a test? Across this nation, most children take what are called standardized tests that are supposed to measure your child’s level of achievement in comparison to other children of the same age group. There are arguably alternative and perhaps more valid ways of measuring progress of children in school such as a portfolio assessment in which samples of children’s work are selected to determine progress. However, standardized tests are still around, and probably always will be! Two areas in which your son or daughter is expected to perform well on standardized tests are reading and math.

Your child’s teacher helps your child perform to his or her optimum through quality teaching throughout the year. Teachers also prepare children for standardized tests by giving practice exercises on how to complete answer forms and on the wording of test questions in addition to other test-taking activities. These exercises familiarize you son or daughter with the nature of the test so he or she will know what to expect. However, as a parent you can also play a role. Below are some ways in which parents can help their child prepare for the standardized test.

• Adequate Sleep. Make sure that your child gets an adequate amount of sleep, not just the night before, but at the minimum for about a week prior to the test. Individuals who are tired make errors in judgment due to fatigue. Sleep deprivation affects all of us: accountants, construction workers, cooks, lawyers, truck drivers, and children taking tests. Eight hours of undisturbed sleep each night for at least a week prior to the test will give your son or daughter the extra edge.
• Proper Nutrition. Always make sure that your child is well-fed, especially before the test. Make sure that he or she goes to school that day with a full stomach. This is very important to good test taking. This does not mean to give him or her sugar-laden food. (Actually, sugar causes fatigue after a short period of time). Foods containing carbohydrates and protein are especially recommended. These foods will maximize his or her performance. Consult with your family physician or dietitian for advice on which foods seem to enhance and which seem to inhibit learning.
• Reduce Anxiety. Talk to your child about the upcoming test. Discuss its importance but do not put excessive pressure on him or her to “do well.” As much as possible, ensure that you follow the family’s regular routines the night before and the morning of the test.

Do not increase your child’s level of anxiety; reduce it by making sure there are no traumas in the house, especially immediately preceding the standardized test. Prevent potential disputes within the family from erupting into full blown “wars.” This might mean you will overlook something which you might not under ordinary circumstances. Tell your son or daughter that you expect his or her best effort, and this, does not necessarily mean a perfect score (which is highly unlikely to be achieved anyway!)

• Inform Yourself. Talk to your child’s teacher about ways in which you can help your child.  Find out about the length and nature of the test, the seating arrangements in the class, who will be administering the test, and the time the test will start and end. Make sure that you inform your child about the testing situation as the teacher has explained in to you. If someone other than the regular teacher will be administering the test, make sure your son or daughter is aware of this. If the test is to be given in a room different from that in which you child usually works, then be sure to mention this so he or she does not walk into a totally unfamiliar environment, one in which he or she may not be immediately comfortable.

Like most of us, children need to have a physically, mentally and psychologically healthy environment in which to develop intellectually. Children will be less likely to do well in school if they have not had the proper nutrition, sleep or if they are psychologically troubled. The suggestions in this column should be kept in mind throughout the school year not just one or two weeks prior to the test.