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

Anxiety overwhelms many children. On Monday Wilson has a school test; on Tuesday he needs to watch his young sister, Estella; on Wednesday he sees his mother crying about the cost the food; on Thursday another test; on Friday he hears the school will fire more teachers. And on Saturday, when he wants to go to the library, he’s told he can’t—it closed, forever. Joe has similar problems. So do Kelly, Ryan, and Emma. Tremendous uncertainty, tremendous responsibility, tremendous loss, tremendous anguish, tremendous anxiety.

Although these problems are complex, parents and professionals can do a great deal to help children reduce the stress and anxiety these problems provoke.  To help knowledgeable adults help children better handle stress and anxiety, Stress Free Kids offers a series of CD’s for children in elementary and high school. I reviewed one of these, called Indigo Ocean Dreams.

Indigo Ocean Dreams presents five interesting, well-told, well-produced stories and exercises for helping six-to-twelve year old children use affirmations (self-complements), diaphragmatic (belly) breathing, imagery, and progressive muscle relaxation to relax and minimize stress. A companion book is available for each story.

By itself, is Indigo Ocean Dreams sufficient to help children with chronic, intense anxiety overcome their anxiety? I doubt it. But used regularly, under the guidance of an expert in anxiety reduction, I suspect that it can make a wonderful contribution. For children with occasional anxiety—anxiety that’s uncomfortable and unwanted, but not dangerous—Indigo Ocean Dreams can be a wonderful CD for parents to routinely play for their children and join them in Indigo’s exercises. It can be an excellent first step in teaching children how to handle the challenge we all face: anxiety.

So, what am I going to do in about an hour, when one of my grandchildren visits my house? Start playing and discussing Indigo Ocean Dreams’ third track: Sea Otter Cove. Then we’ll have some fun practicing something he sees me practice daily: diaphragmatic (belly) breathing.

Indigo Ocean Dreams and the companion books are available at www.amazon.com and www.stressfreekids.com. I (Howard Margolis) have not met the author, Lori Lite, and I have no financial connections with www.stressfreekids.com.

A Note on Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com)

Psychology Today.com recently wrote that Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds was one of the three “best books about education published in 2010. Recommend [it] to your friends.” On our blog, an English teacher wrote that Beating the Odds “is one of the best books, if not the best book on education published this year.”  A Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism called it “a great book.” A parent wrote, “Your Reading Disabilities book is by far the best resource I have found regarding the IEP and IDEA and providing understandable and concrete suggestions and implementation strategies.” Another wrote, your book is “fascinating and effective.” On Amazon, a professor of special education called it “a fantastic resource… well-written, practical… an essential guide.” The Kansas City Examiner.com cited our blog as one of the ten best special needs blogs of 2010.

We thank these and many other reviewers for their kind words. And we hope that our book and blog helps lots of children, parents, teachers, IEP Team members, and schools. It’s why we keep plugging away.

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

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FREE CONFERENCE CALL ON

GETTING AND KEEPING SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES IN TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES

STACI GREENWALD, ESQ., SPECIAL EDUCATION ATTORNEY

When: March 24, 2011 @ 9 pm EST
Phone number: Call (661) 673-8600
Use Access Code: 899615# (remember the #)
Length: Approximately 50 minutes

To submit questions in advance, please e-mail them to howard@reading2008.com.

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

Experts who have long and assiduously studied their field, who know far more than you about their field, deserve your attention and respect, especially when they’re talking about your child. When they’re speaking, you should listen and, if necessary, ask for clarification to fully understand what they’re saying. But they don’t deserve your complete trust and obedience—they can be wrong. This includes us. Like all experts, we have trouble predicting the future; we’ve made mistakes.

Below are the mistakes a few other well-known experts have made:

• “Kid, you’re too small. You ought to go out and shine shoes.” — Casey Stengel, 1936, Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, telling Phil Rizzuto he’d never make it in professional baseball. Rizzuto is in baseball’s the Hall of Fame.
• “He couldn’t hit an inside pitch to save his neck. If he were a white man I doubt if they would even consider him as big league material.” — Bob Feller, Cleveland Indian pitcher and Hall of Famer, commenting on the Dodgers’ signing of Jackie Robinson. Robinson, who broke baseball’s racial barrier, is in baseball’s Hall of Fame. And he did hit many an inside pitch.
• “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover …. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us.” — Herbert Hoover, 1930, President of the United States. The depression lasted another decade, until the beginning of WW II.
• “The end of the decline of the stock market will … probably not be long, only a few more days at most.” — Irving Fisher, 1929,  Professor of Economics, Yale University. Well after Dr. Fisher’s pronouncement, the market continued to crash—and crash it did.

So what should you do? Read, learn, get other opinions, weigh the pluses and minuses, ponder what will likely happen and what will be the likely consequences of making a mistake. If recommendations are made, ask for the research—pro and con—that discusses them. If a strong body of research doesn’t exist, consider applying the Criterion of the Least Dangerous Assumption (LDA):

The criterion of the least dangerous assumption states that ‘[i]n the absence of conclusive data, education decisions should be based on assumptions which if incorrect, will have the least dangerous effect on the student’ (Donnellan, 1984, p. 142). When data are inconclusive, and the research and the student’s needs are imperfectly matched, consultants should ask, ‘If the potential interventions fail, which is likely to least harm the student?’ To choose interventions with no greater chance of succeeding than other interventions, and that will likely produce greater harm if unsuccessful, is unethical. (Heron, Martz, & Margolis, 1996, p. 384)

And like we recommend in our book, Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds, do three things: monitor, monitor, monitor, and do so frequently. Build it into all programs and IEPs. Chapter 7 discusses and illustrates monitoring in detail.

A Note on Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds (www.reading2008.com)

Psychology Today.com recently wrote that Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds was one of the three “best books about education published in 2010. Recommend [it] to your friends.” On our blog, an English teacher wrote that Beating the Odds “ is one of the best books, if not the best book on education published this year.”  A Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism called it “a great book.” A parent wrote, “Your Reading Disabilities book is by far the best resource I have found regarding the IEP and IDEA and providing understandable and concrete suggestions and implementation strategies.” On Amazon, a professor of special education called it “a fantastic resource… well-written, practical… an essential guide.” The Kansas City Examiner.com cited our blog as one of the ten best special needs blogs of 2010.

We thank these and many other reviewers for their kind words. And we hope that our book and blog helps lots of children, parents, teachers, IEP Team members, and schools. It’s why we keep plugging away.

References

Donnellan, A.M. (1984). The criterion of least dangerous assumption. Behavior Disorders, 9, 141-150.

Heron, T. E., Martz, S., & Margolis, H. (November 1996). Ethical and legal issues in consultation: A practitioner’s primer. Remedial and Special Education (RASE), 17(2), 377-385, 392.

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

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

Last week, we discussed five evaluation and IEP traps that often harm children with reading disabilities. Today, we’ll discuss five more.

Agree or Disagree: It’s fair to ask a school to measure a child’s progress once or twice a year, but asking a school to objectively measure progress weekly is simply asking too much. It’s “overkill.”

Disagree: Rarely measuring a child’s progress is like rarely checking the air pressure in your car’s tires. You won’t know it’s low until the blowout. Like checking pressure, probing the reading, writing, spelling, and math progress of struggling readers takes only minutes. Weekly checking allows you to quickly identify problems and to quickly make changes before damage is irreversible. One well-reserahced method for doing this is curriculum-based measurement, called CBM. Here’s what the literature says about it:

• Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is an … assessment strategy used in special education to monitor student progress…. It is easy to use and sensitive to small changes in students’ skill levels…. In CBM, the teacher collects very brief samples of important student behaviors. For example, to assess oral reading skills, students read aloud for 1 minute while the teacher (or an assistant) records the number of words read correctly. This ‘probe’ is administered frequently (e.g., two or three times each week), and results are graphed to provide a visual record of the student’s progress. (Lewis & Doorlag, 2003)
• By monitoring students on a regular basis using CBM, the teacher can quickly shift away from educational programming that is not found to be sufficiently effective in increasing a child’s rate of learning. In fact, research has shown that teachers who use CBM to monitor the effectiveness of instructional interventions tend to achieve significantly higher rates of student learning than those instructors who rely on more traditional test measures. (Wright, undated)

Agree or Disagree: Research has clearly demonstrated which methods and curriculum are best for each child.

Disagree: Unfortunately, decades of research have failed to demonstrate what methods will work for each child. Thus, schools, IEP Teams, and teachers need to develop hypotheses or educated-guesses about what will work and then carefully and frequently monitor the child’s progress:

• 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)

Similarly, no one has found the perfect or best method, despite absolute, unbridled claims of success and superiority. As Drs. Gerald G. Duffy and James V. Hoffman (1999) argued in their famous article, “In pursuite of an illusion: The flawed search for a perfect method” :

• There is no one perfect method for teaching reading to all children…. The answer is not in the method but in the teacher (p. 10)…. Adovcates claim their method or program is ‘proven by research’…. But that claim is erroneous. In fact. no single method or approach has ever been proven to be a cure-all…. Despite the claims of their various advocates, schools invariably abandon such programs after a few years and switch to something else. Not a single one has proved to be the perfect method…. The answer is not in the method; it is in the teacher. It has been repeatedly established that the best instruction results when combinations of methods are orchestrated by a teacher who decides what to do in light of children’s needs…. Hence, reading instruction effectiveness lies not with a single program or method but rather with a teacher who thoughtfully and analytically integrates various programs, materials, and methods as the situation demands. (p. 11)

Agree or Disagree: A child’s IDEA classification (e.g., autism, learning disabilities) tells IEP Teams which methods will and will not work for him.

Disagree: Children with the same classification or label can differ dramatically. Sometimes, the needs of two children with the same label differ greatly, and sometimes two children with different labels have similar needs. For example, one child with learning disabilities and one with “cognitive impairment” may need extensive help with reading comprehension at a 3^rd grade instructional level, whereas two children with learning disabilities may have dramatically different academic needs. One may be an excellent reader, but struggle with math. Another may excel in math, but at age 15 cannot recognize many words above a 2^nd grade level. This is why the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA) forbids IEP Teams to base programs on classification; instead, programs must be based on each child’s unique needs, needs that should be specified in the Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance section of each child’s IEP.

Agree or Disagree: In developing an IEP, many parents and other IEP Team members spend too much time and energy on placement and methods before agreeing on the IEP’s Present Levels (“present levels of academic achievement and functional performance”) and the Goals and Objectives sections.

Agree: We’ve often seen parents and school personnel argue over methods and placements before knowing what the child could and couldn’t do well, what he could and couldn’t do quickly and accurately, what he liked and disliked, and what goals were critical for him to achieve by the end of the school year. Until these are clearly and fully understood and stated, no one can know what methods or placements are appropriate.

Agree or Disagree: Typically, good teachers can master specialized instructional methods in 1-to-2 hours.

Disagree: It can take months, even years to master specialized instructional methods. The more complicated and detailed the methods, the greater the other demands on the teachers’ time, the less the teachers’ relevant background, the greater the time and effort involved in mastering the methods. Keep in mind that mastery means more than simply following procedures. It involves making decisions and knowing when and how to modify the methods to help struggling readers overcome unexpected difficulties. In other words, mastering new methods is a lot like learning to read: often, it’s easier said than done.

References

Duffy, G. G., & Hoffman, J. V. (1999). In pursuit of an illusion: the flawed search for a perfect method. The Reading Teacher, 53(1), pp. 10-16.

Lewis, R. B., & Doorlag, D. H. (2003) Teaching Special Students in General Education Classrooms. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

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.

Wright, J. (undated). Curriculum-Based Measurement: A Manual for Teachers. Syracuse, NY Syracuse City Schools

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

www.reading2008.com

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

A Guest Post by

Louis Pica, Jr., Ed.D., Child Psychologist

Note: Louis Pica, Jr. was an outstanding child psychologist who worked tirelessly to help children and youth with learning, emotional, cognitive, and attention difficulties. Because Lou was practical, humane, and highly structured, the children with whom he worked benefited greatly. Below are several of his tips for helping parents of children with attention difficulties to monitor their children’s learning and to motivate them to succeed. In addition to attention difficulties, these tips have proven effective for children with learning, emotional, cognitive difficulties. Of course, you may want to modify these so they reflect your child’s stage of development and his school and home situations. But reading these, and then discussing them with a psychologist, learning consultant, or teacher, may be a good place to start. Thanks Lou. – Howard Margolis

Homework Book: It is absolutely essential to require children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) to use an assignment book. The following procedures should be employed:

• Parents should make arrangements with the teacher to check the book at the end of each day to insure that the assignments have been correctly recorded and for the teacher to sign the page to indicate the assignments were recorded correctly. It would be helpful if the teacher wrote all the assignments on the board—in the same place—for the child to copy.
• Parents should check the book after the homework is completed to insure that all the assignments have been completed. Parents should also initial the book to indicate that they checked the work and that it was done satisfactorily.
• Parents, with their child’s help, should set up a homework chart. They can use a simple block calendar or construct a more elaborate chart. This chart should be large and quite visible; it should be placed in the child’s homework area. For each night that the parents initial the book indicating that it was brought home, assignments copied, teacher initialed, and all assignments satisfactorily completed, parents should place a sticker, star, or check on the chart. The chart should be large enough to reflect at least a month’s worth of homework.
• In the summer, parents should have their child work to earn money; the money should be put in a jar and kept in a visible place. If the homework book is lost (or beamed aboard the Starship Enterprise), the money in the jar should be used to purchase a new book. For each week that the book is not lost, parents should add money to the jar; later, the child should use the money for something he wants.
• Parents should, with the child’s input, construct a list of favorite activities. This list should be posted next to the homework chart. The number of stickers or checks needed to gain access to the list for the weekend should be indicated on the chart. Initially, the number required should be set low and gradually increased as the child becomes more proficient at completing the homework assignments.

Homework Time: Parents should set a consistent time for their child to complete his homework. This time should be before 7:00 pm. During homework time, quiet is needed throughout the home; no TVs, radios, stereos, or other media should be on. The standing rule is that no electronic devices may be operated in the house (including Nintendo) until homework is completed. Completion means that the parent signed the homework book.

General Considerations: Parents should not allow homework to become an arena for hand-to hand combat with their child. The child has the right to choose to not do homework. The consequence is that he does not gain access to any pleasurable activities (e.g., television) that evening. In addition, he does not earn credit on his homework chart, which will impact his weekend activities.

Parents must convey—through a calm, firm, matter-of-fact emotional demeanor—that the child has a choice and it is the child who will be most affected by the consequences of his choice. Parents should remember that frequent and contingent verbal praise for appropriate school performance, even when it’s infrequent at first, is critically important to enhance performance. In the long run, yelling, screaming, hollering, threatening, punishing, and other punitive responses never improve children’s school performance.

While their child does his homework, parents should not sit with him. If their child is highly dependent on adult help, parents should spend a few minutes reviewing the assignment and directions to insure the child understands how to complete it. Parents can then tell their child to work on the assignment for a set amount of time and tell him that after the time has elapsed, they will return. The time between checks can be gradually increased until the child can get through all the homework with the parents checking only the final product.

Edited by Howard Margolis, Ed.D. 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

They’re wrong. And if they take this argument to court, and the school’s experts are well-versed in the research, the school has valid reasons for prefering its methodology, the IEP’s goals and objectives and services are sound,  and the hearing officer or judge believes, like most do, that courts should not overturn a school’s decision about methodology, the parents will likely lose.

I have yet to see a compelling body of independent research showing that Wilson is superior to any other method, or that it’s highly effective. Is Wilson hyped? Yes. Is it brilliantly marketed? Yes. Does it work? Sometimes. In general, is it effective? No one knows. But here’s what I know:

• I’ve seen it fail.
• I’ve seen children with reading disabilities reject it out of boredom.
• I’ve seen teachers use it because they were forced to, and it showed in their poor (uninformed) instructional decisions and in the rigid way they used it.
• The federally funded What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) concluded that for beginning reading, the “Wilson Reading System® was found to have potentially positive effects on alphabetics and no discernible effects on fluency and comprehension…. The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Wilson Reading System ® to be small for alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension” (2007, pp. 4, 1). Keep in mind that the word potentially means possibly, not proven.
• The Johns Hopkins’ Best Evidence Encyclopedia reported that the evidence supporting the effectiveness of Wilson was “insufficient” (2009, p. 13)
• I’ve seen it (and other Orton-Gillingham type approaches) succeed when children with reading disabilities were tutored daily, individually or in pairs; the teacher was knowledgeable, skilled, and enthusiastic about teaching reading; the program was intensive and the teachers made it fun for the students; the teachers structured activities to produce moderate challenge and lots of success; the teachers supplemented it with widespread reading and modified the program at the first sign the students were having difficulty. Under these conditions, I’ve seen other programs work just as well.

If you’re a parent who has heard good things about Wilson, and your child has the kind of word identification and decoding problems that Wilson is designed to remediate, and the school and your child’s teachers are knowledgeable about and skilled in using Wilson, request it, but make sure that:

• Your child’s program is built around important goals and objectives that are easily and accurately measured.
• His progress is carefully monitored, at least weekly.
• His program is modified whenever he encounters problems.
• His program is supplemented by other activities that compensate for Wilson’s weaknesses (e.g., interest, reading comprehension).

Keep in mind that your commitment should not be to Wilson or any other reading method, but to your child’s progress, progress that strengthens all his needs, including communication, academic, social, and emotional.

If, however, the school rejects Wilson and insists on an eclectic program or another off-the-shelf commercial program that the teachers are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about, and it’s designed to meet your child’s diagnosed needs, don’t argue about the program. Instead, focus on the previously listed factors. Focus on having

• Your child’s program emphasize important goals and objectives that are easily and accurately measured.
• His progress is carefully monitored, at least weekly.
• His program modified whenever he encounters problems or needs to move ahead.
• His program supplemented by activities that compensate for the program’s weaknesses.

In addition, schedule regular meetings to review the data on his progress, discuss possible program modifications, and discuss how  you can buoy his spirits and supplement the school’s efforts. If your child has serious reading problems, it’s reasonable to meet monthly.

For more help on these topics, read chapters 6 and 7 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Chapter 6 offers guidance on how to help children with reading disabilities at home; chapter 7 shows how you and the school can monitor progress. Our post of October 17, 2009 sheds additional light on the topic, Should You Believe What You Hear About Reading Programs?

Resources

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

Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., Davis, S., & Madden, N. A. (2009). Effective Programs for Struggling Readers: A Best-Evidence Synthesis. Baltimore, MD:  Johns Hopkins University School of Education’s Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education (CDDRE). Retrieved 1/12/10, from http://www.bestevidence.org.

What Works Clearinghouse (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/)

HM © Reading2008 & Beyond

Here are 15 guidelines that can strengthen the effectiveness of your advocacy.

1. Have your child evaluated by experts who can identify your child’s needs.

2. Make sure you understand his needs before you meet with school personnel to discuss his needs and possible interventions.

3. Make specific requests (in writing) for meeting his needs; support your requests with reports from well-credentialed experts, experts whom the school respects.

4. Treat people with respect, even if you disagree with them, even if they reject your requests.

5. Keep looking for ways to solve problems; remember that the school’s suggestions for solving your child’s problems may be as good as yours. Avoid the trap of advocating for a specific reading method, especially one that has a weak research base (e.g., Wilson, Fast Forword, Orton-Gillingham); instead, focus on goals, objectives, frequent monitoring of progress, and frequent meeting to adjust your child’s program.

6. Keep written, dated records of whatever anyone in the school tells you.

7. Make a copy of every item you receive from the school. Organize the originals in chronological order; don’t write on them. Organize the copies in chronological order by subject.

8. Have someone accompany you to all meetings. If possible, have a knowledgeable expert or an advocate accompany you. Make sure that whomever accompanies you treats people with respect, works to solve problems, and understands both the relevant laws and reading disabilities. Unfortunately, many well-intentioned advocates have little knowledge of reading disabilities, and many reading specialists and special educators have little knowledge of special education laws.

9. Take your time at meetings, but never cause unnecessary delays. Work to understand what’s being said and what’s happening. If necessary, schedule a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and umpteenth meeting. Keep meeting until you get your child the program and services he needs, and until he makes satisfactory progress. If people tell you this is unrealistic, think of the consequences of not meeting, of not getting your child what he needs.

10. Send the school a written summary of each meeting: what happened, what was agreed to, what you disagree with, remaining issues and concerns, requests for additional meetings.

11. Know and understand the special education and and related laws that apply to your child.

12. Understand how the school operates, how it does things, who has the real decision-making power.

13. Keep momentum going. Combat the memory-numbing effects of long periods of inactivity by contacting school personnel weekly until your child gets the services he needs, scheduling frequent meeting to monitor progress and problem-solve your child’s needs, keeping your child’s unmet needs in the forefront of school personnel’s concerns.

14. Be persistent, be respectful. By your actions—not just your words—help school personnel realize that until your child’s needs are met you will be in continual contact with them and will use the relevant laws to get your child the services he needs.

15. Monitor your child’s progress. Even programs strongly supported by research may fail your child. Small tweaks in the program and complementing it with other instructional strategies and classroom modifications may produce huge gains. So ask the school to monitor your child’s progress, at least weekly. Do the same for yourself. Here are three resources:

    • Margolis, H., & Alber-Morgan, S. (2007). Monitoring your child’s IEP: A focus on reading. Insights on Learning Disabilities, 4(2), 1-26. (Can be downloaded for free from www.reading2008.com).

    • Margolis, H., & Brannigan, G. G. (2009). Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Voorhees, NJ: Reading2008 & Beyond (www.reading2008.com), chapter 7.

    • Steckler, P. M., Lembke, E. S, & Saenz, L. (2007). Advanced Applications of CBM in Reading: Instructional Decision-Making Strategies. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of Special Education Programs; retrieved 8/20/07, from http://www.studentprogress.org/summer_institute/2007/Adv%20Reading/AdvancedCBMReading2007.pdf.

If the above fails, consider hiring an attorney who is skilled at problem solving, who tries to problem solve with schools, and who has an enviable track record of getting children the services they need.

These guidelines do not guarantee success. But they can dramatically improve your chances of getting your child the services he needs, strengthening his reading, and making his school life more positive, motivating, and enriching

HM © Reading2008 & Beyond

Children who have difficulty with phonological awareness—isolating, identifying, and manipulating large and small sounds—usually have difficulty learning to read. That’s the bad news. The good news is that high quality, focused instruction can often eliminate or minimize the problem.

Examples

Even with the definitions above, many readers will probably find the terms phonological awareness and phonemic awareness too abstract to be meaningful. So here are modified examples based on the Test of Phonological Awareness Skills (TOPAS; co-authored by a friend of mine). In these  example, the examiner is speaking.

• Rhyming: “Finish the sentence with a word that rhymes with hat: The dog chased the _____.”
• Blending or Incomplete Words: “I will say a word with a missing sound. What word am I saying? Bath___oom.”
• Sound Sequencing: “Let’s match blocks with sounds. Remember what we learned before; the blue block makes the /m/ sound and the red block the /a/ sound. When I say the word, make the blocks match the sounds you hear. Here’s the word: May.”
• Deletion of Small Sounds (phonemes): “Say the word horse. Now say it without the /h/ sound.”

Evaluation of Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness

If you think your child might have difficulty with phonological awareness or its toughest component, phonemic awareness, request his school to assess his abilities in both areas. The reasons are simple: difficulties in these areas will likely create reading disabilities; eliminating or minimizing them might prevent reading disabilities.

But is one test, even a superior one like the TOPAS, sufficient for making definitive evaluations? In a word, no. Much more information is needed. Here is what the TOPAS manual says:

Even tests that have the highest possible levels of reliability have enough error to recommend caution in their interpretation. For example, a test with almost perfect reliability [children whose abilities remain the same will always get the score]  still contains 15% error…. The error associated with test results makes it imperative to interpret them with caution, especially when they are being used to make decisions about children. Diagnoses and hypotheses emanating from test results must be confirmed by other data. It is wise for examiners to remember the dictum that ‘tests don’t diagnose, people do’ and to make sure that they do not base their diagnoses exclusively on the results of a specific test. Test results are merely observations of a set of behaviors. They specify a performance level at a given time, in a particular situation, but they do not specify why a person performed in a particular manner. (p. 21)

Interpreting the results of a standardized test such as the TOPAS should be only the first step in a comprehensive evaluation of a student’s problems and should be followed by extensive clinical teaching, criterion-referenced testing, and informal assessment procedures. The findings of the total evaluation should be the basis for designing an appropriate instructional intervention. (p. 22)

All parents and evaluators should view all test scores with these cautions.

If a comprehensive evaluation finds that your child needs extra instruction in phonological awareness, the school should frequently and carefully monitor his progress. Only by analyzing monitoring information can it intelligently adjust his program to overcome continued difficulties or, if he made great progress, focus instruction on something more appropriate.

You can learn more about the TOPAS at www.proedinc.com.  You can learn more about phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and monitoring in chapters 3, 6, and 7 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds.

Resources

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

Newcomer, P. L., & Barenbaum, E. (2003). Test of Phonological Awareness Skills. Austin, TX: ProEd.

HM © Reading2008 & Beyond

With enthusiasm, dedication, and genuine tears of gratitude, many parents advocate for particular reading programs, programs they claim cured their child’s dyslexia. They’re joined by many teachers and private reading consultants. These proponents—genuine in their beliefs and unbridled enthusiasm for particular programs—ignore these possibilities:

• Good teaching, rather than the particular program, was responsible.
• The placebo effect was operating, as it often does. A sugar pill can sometimes be as effective as a brand name pill costing $100.
• The program works for some children, but only for a few.
• Other programs would have worked as well, or better.

Before parents argue with schools to adopt a particular reading program, they ought to look at the research evaluating its effectiveness. The same goes for schools. Fortunately, it’s easy to do. All parents and schools have to do is visit Johns Hopkins University’s Best Evidence Encyclopedia at www.bestevidence.org or the federal government’s What Works Clearinghouse at www.whatworks.ed.gov. They list and evaluate many reading (and mathematics) programs.

As an example, let’s look at the Wilson Reading program, one that some parents and private consultants argue for incessantly. After all, it works. The Evening Star (a mythical newspaper) said so; it cured Alice of dyslexia. And so parents fight for Wilson Reading, the program that will cure their children of dyslexia.

But does it work? Here’s what the Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE) found: No qualifying studies or insufficient evidence of effectiveness. Here’s what the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) reported: “The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Wilson Reading System® to be small for alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed general reading achievement.” In other words, there’s no compelling evidence that the Wilson Program can help most children with reading disabilities.

Our recommendations are straightforward. If your child’s progress is poor, ask his school to:

• Use a program well supported by evidence. Check with the BEE and the WWC.
• Train his teachers to use the program; give them whatever support they need.
• Monitor his progress frequently and carefully, no matter his program.
• Analyze the monitoring data to determine if his program needs modification.
• Make sure his teachers—the key to his success—know a lot about teaching reading, are skilled in doing so, and are committed to making him a successful reader.

For information about understanding the qualities of excellent teachers, read chapters 2 and 3 in Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. For information on monitoring, read chapter 7.

References

Best Evidence Encyclopedia, www.bestevidence.org

What Works Clearinghouse, www.whatworks.ed.gov

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

HM © Reading2008 & Beyond.

A Reading Evaluation Needs to Pinpoint the Problem: The Five Areas of Reading

To be effective, programs that aim to improve the reading of children with reading disabilities need to focus on the child’s specific difficulties. Identifying those difficulties requires an evaluation from a reading specialist.

Broadly speaking, difficulties in reading, especially beginning reading, fall into five areas. Michael Coyne and his colleagues list and define these:

• Phonological awareness: “The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words.” For example, “Liam, tell me the word I’m saying: buh…all.” (In pronouncing buh, the uh should be minimized.)
• Phonics: “Understanding the relationship between the letters of written language and the individual sounds of spoken language letters and using these relationships to read and spell words.” Unlike phonological awareness, this involves written words. For example, “Liam, here’s a new word. It’s not a real word. Sound it out; say it.”
• Fluency: “The effortless, automatic ability to read quickly and accurately in connected text.” For example: Liam read the passage in 60 seconds and correctly pronounced 123 words. Fluency is not a problem as 123 words is average for his grade.”
• Vocabulary: “The ability to understand and use words to acquire and convey meaning.” For example, “So Liam, why do you think the author used the word shaky to describe the airplane?”
• Comprehension: “The complex cognitive process involving the intentional interaction between reader and text to construct meaning.” In other words, understanding the author’s meaning. For example, Liam understands the material if he can accurately summarize it and logically discuss its implications.

Before offering instruction most likely to strengthen the reading abilities of children with reading disabilities, a reading specialist needs to screen the child in these areas and then more fully assess the child in areas of suspected weakness. The specialist needs to determine if the child struggles in these areas, and, if so, at what level can he comfortably and efficiently benefit from instruction.

Evaluations Need to Assess the Child’s Responses to Specific Instructional Procedures and Methods: Diagnostic Teaching

Testing helps to identify the child’s level of functioning and what he needs to learn. It offers little to guide instruction. To identify the instructional strategies and methods likely to improve the child’s reading, a reading specialist needs to observe the child getting his usual instruction and conduct diagnostic teaching.

In diagnostic teaching, the reading specialist teaches the child and measures his response to instruction. The specialist will sometimes compare different pacing, different rewards, and different methods. She may find that he learned new words more quickly and enjoyed himself more with Method-A than Method-B. If so, instruction should initially emphasize Method-A.

Evaluations Should Assess the Effectiveness of the Different Instructional Strategies and Methods the School Used: Monitoring

Testing and diagnostic teaching are often inadequate to pinpoint the child’s problems and the instructional strategies and methods that will likely improve his reading. Thus, schools need to frequently monitor the child’s progress. If this information is available, the reading specialist should analyze it.

Note that at the end of the last section we used and italicized the word initially. If Method-A worked better than B, why did we do this?  Because Method-A may not continue to produce good results. Thus, it’s critical for schools to keep monitoring the progress of children with reading disabilities and adjusting instruction whenever children run into difficulty. That’s a major reason for monitoring. Of course, schools should monitor adjustments so it’s clear they’ve resolved rather than added to the difficulties.

Answering the Question

Once I have the information discussed in this post, I can begin to answer the question. Without this information, I’m guessing, and guesses are often wrong.

For more information about the components of reading and monitoring, see chapters 3, 4, and 7 in Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. To learn what to ask for in a reading evaluation, see chapter 5. For a free copy of  Monitoring Your Child’s IEP: A Focus on Reading (co-authored by Sheila Alber-Morgan, Associate Professor, Ohio State University), join our mailing list on www.reading2008.com.

References

Coyne, M. D., Zipoli Jr., R. P., & Ruby, M. F. (2006). Beginning reading instruction for students at risk for reading disabilities: What, how, and when. Intervention in School & Clinic, 41(3), 161-168.

Margolis, H., & Alber-Morgan, S. (2007). Monitoring your child’s IEP: A focus on reading. Insights on Learning Disabilities, 4(2), 1-26 (www.reading2008.com).

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

HM © Reading2008 & Beyond