Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

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