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Prior research supports the need for elementary-aged students with reading difficulties (RDs) to receive explicit systematic small-group evidence-based reading instruction. Yet for many students, simply receiving evidence-based reading instruction in a small-group setting is insufficient to reach the progress milestones needed to meet grade-level reading standards. The current study examined whether (a) elementary school students with RD constitute homogeneous or heterogeneous groups when considering their basic language and cognitive skills (using a latent profile analysis) and (b) latent profiles are predictive of response to reading comprehension instruction (using a mixed modeling approach). The sample consisted of 335 students, including students with RD and typical students (n = 57). The results revealed heterogeneity within students with RD—there were two distinct profiles, with one having higher basic language (reading fluency and decoding) and cognitive (verbal domain productivity, cognitive flexibility, and working memory) skills and lower attention skills and the other having stronger attention skills and lower basic language and cognitive skills. The findings also suggested that latent profiles were predictive of response to reading comprehension instruction. Our results provide a convincing argument for leading the field in the direction of developing customized interventions. It is conceivable, but remains to be further examined, that researchers and educators could potentially improve reading outcomes through providing a customized reading intervention to a student based on their cognitive–language profile. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: Although there are a few studies that previously classified students with reading difficulties into latent profiles using broadly conceptualized language and reading skills, there are no studies that simultaneously used cognitive–language skills, including attention, to examine heterogeneity among elementary school students with reading difficulties. Furthermore, there are no studies that investigated latent profiles as predictors of the response to instruction. In this study, we identified two distinct profiles, with one having higher basic language and cognitive skills and lower attention skills and the other having stronger attention skills and lower basic language and cognitive skills. The results suggested that latent profiles were predictive of response to reading instruction. Our findings expand what is known about customized interventions—it is conceivable that researchers and educators who consider the cognitive–language profiles of students may provide more responsive instruction and bring about improved student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Component skills and discourse frameworks of reading have identified characteristics of readers and texts that influence comprehension. However, these 2 frameworks have not previously been integrated in a comprehensive and systematic way to explain performance on any standardized assessment of reading comprehension that is in widespread use across a broad developmental spectrum. The current study undertook such an integration using the reading comprehension subtest of the Gates-McGinitie Reading Tests, investigating characteristics of the test's reading passages and comprehension questions and the component reading skills of students in middle and high school (n = 1,190) in order to determine the extent to which each of these dimensions affect test performance, both on average and through interaction with one another. The component skills of reading included word reading, reading fluency, vocabulary, background knowledge, and working memory. Test questions were coded for their processing demands, specifically the need to recall information from test and to form text-based inferences, while text passages were measured on word frequency, sentence length, text cohesion, and genre. We found that better vocabulary and background knowledge were the most important reader characteristics in accounting for reading comprehension. The processing demands of test questions were not highly predictive of item difficulty. Rather, genre was the most important passage feature in explaining item difficulty. Reader-test interactions were present, but were not pronounced. We discuss the importance of these findings as they relate to the measurement of comprehension and the integration of component skills and text-discourse models of reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable focus in public policy on screening children for reading difficulties. Sixty years of research have not resolved questions of what constructs assessed in kindergarten best predict subsequent reading outcomes. This study assessed the relative importance of multiple measures obtained in a kindergarten sample for the prediction of reading outcomes at the end of 1st and 2nd grades. Analyses revealed that measures of phonological awareness, letter sound knowledge, and naming speed consistently accounted for the unique variance across reading outcomes whereas measures of perceptual skills and oral language and vocabulary did not. These results show that measures of letter name and letter sound knowledge, naming speed, and phonological awareness are good predictors of multiple reading outcomes in Grades 1 and 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information about a child's phonological awareness skill. Composition of items thought to measure phonological awareness skill; Function of 2-parameter logistic item response (IRT) model; Demonstration of information obtained from IRT model; Results from phonological awareness on the unidimensional construct.

Investigates the importance of instruction in persons learning to read, while highlighting methods which can be used to prevent reading failure in children. Findings of studies conducted; Methodology used in study; What findings indicate; Analysis of results attained in study.

Compares approaches to regression-based logic and reading-level-match designs on the relation of phonological and orthographic processing to early reading in children. Evaluation of children with reading disabilities; Application of Rasch-scaled decoding scores; Differences in cognitive skills; Representation of the orthographic-decoding relationship.

Reports on a study designed to test whether the development of children with reading disabilities are characterized by models of developmental lag or deficit. Use of longitudinal assessments in the identification process; Other methods of study; What results reveal about the development of reading skills beyond a certain age; Conclusion of study; References material on the subject.

This study of 1,338 Spanish-speaking 1st graders examined contextual effects of bilingual programs on reading comprehension and the effect of language of instruction within these contexts. The study included 128 classrooms in 32 schools located in border Texas and in urban Texas and California. These classrooms used either English immersion or Spanish maintenance bilingual programs. Detailed observations of teachers' instructional language were made, sampled within the year. The analyses allowed classroom-level differences to be separated from student-level differences, for Spanish and English passage comprehension to be considered simultaneously. While mean differences between programs were reduced for English passage comprehension, maintenance programs still outperformed immersion programs in Spanish. Results also indicated large program and locale covariance differences at the classroom level, implying important differences in how these programs operate in these locales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study evaluated the relation between Spanish and English vocabulary. Whereas previously reported correlations have revealed strong differences among types of vocabulary measures used and the ages of the students tested, no prior study had used a multilevel model to control for classroom-level differences. The current study used multiple measures of vocabulary--picture vocabulary and narrative production tasks--in multilevel models of 1,300 Spanish-speaking students in 247 kindergarten and 1st-grade classrooms in English immersion and bilingual transitional programs. The current results highlight the need to separate classroom effects from student effects, since for vocabulary measures, student-level correlations were strongly biased toward zero when classroom-level correlations were opposite in direction from student-level correlations. Most important, the current results support a strong distinction between types of vocabulary measure (e.g., picture vs. narrative) and suggest sizable influence of instruction for questions of bilingual performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious conceptual and procedural problems associated with current diagnostic methods call for alternative approaches to assessing and diagnosing students with reading problems. This study presents a new analytic model to improve the classification and prediction of children's reading development. Growth mixture modeling was used to identify the presence of 10 different heterogeneous developmental patterns. In all, 411 children in kindergarten through Grade 2 from 3 elementary schools in Texas were administered measures of phonological awareness, word recognition, and rapid naming skills 4 times a year. The mean ages were 5.8 years (SD = 0.35) for the kindergartners, 6.9 years (SD = 0.39) for Grade 1, and 8.0 years (SD = 0.43) for Grade 2; the percentage of boys was 50%. The results indicate that precursor reading skills such as phonological awareness and rapid naming are highly predictive of word reading (word recognition) and that developmental profiles formed in kindergarten are directly associated with development in Grades 1 and 2. Students identified as having reading-related difficulties in kindergarten exhibited slower development of word recognition skills in subsequent years of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines how more letter-sound instruction or less letter-sound instruction affected first grader's progress in reading and spelling words. Tests of phonemic segmentation; Individual growth models analysis; Regulatory effects in word reading.

We evaluated the effects of student characteristics (sight word reading efficiency, phonological decoding, verbal knowledge, level of reading ability, grade, gender) and text features (passage difficulty, length, genre, and language and discourse attributes) on the oral reading fluency of a sample of middle-school students in Grades 6-8 (N = 1,794). Students who were struggling (n = 704) and typically developing readers (n = 1,028) were randomly assigned to read five l-rain passages from each of 5 Lexile bands (within student range of 550 Lexiles). A series of multilevel analyses showed that student and text characteristics contributed uniquely to oral reading fluency rates. Student characteristics involving sight word reading efficiency and level of decoding ability accounted for more variability than reader type and verbal knowledge, with small, but statistically significant effects of grade and gender. The most significant text feature was passage difficulty level. Interactions involving student text characteristics, especially attributes involving overall ability level and difficulty of the text, were also apparent. These results support views of the development of oral reading fluency that involve interactions of student and text characteristics and highlight the importance of scaling for passage difficulty level in assessing individual differences in oral reading fluency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a randomized controlled trial conducted to evaluate the effects of an intensive, individualized, Tier 3 reading intervention for second grade students who had previously experienced inadequate response to quality first grade classroom reading instruction (Tier 1) and supplemental small-group intervention (Tier 2). Also evaluated were cognitive characteristics of students with inadequate response to intensive Tier 3 intervention. Students were randomized to receive the research intervention (N = 47) or the instruction and intervention typically provided in their schools (N = 25). Results indicated that students who received the research intervention made significantly better growth than those who received typical school instruction on measures of word identification, phonemic decoding, and word reading fluency and on a measure of sentence- and paragraph-level reading comprehension. Treatment effects were smaller and not statistically significant on phonemic decoding efficiency, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension in extended text. Effect sizes for all outcomes except oral reading fluency met criteria for substantive importance; however, many of the students in the intervention continued to struggle. An evaluation of cognitive profiles of adequate and inadequate responders was consistent with a continuum of severity (as opposed to qualitative differences), showing greater language and reading impairment prior to the intervention in students who were inadequate responders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing interest in the role of phonological awareness across languages. However, the role of phonological awareness in various languages may differ by features of the languages as well as by features of the speakers. The current meta-analysis catalogs these relations and examines factors that may have influenced how closely related these measures are between English and other languages. Studies were selected reporting cross-language correlations with English phonological measures involving children in preschool to upper elementary (ages 4-10 years). A random effects model of 101 correlations within 38 studies suggested that the cross-language correlation of phonological tasks is influenced heavily by the language used and to some extent by the linguistic grain size of the tasks used. Although no strong effect of age was found, variability across studies was significant, reflecting unexplained differences likely due to features unable to be modeled in the current sample. The present study suggests limitations in the current research base for drawing cross-language inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the reassessments of the National Reading Panel (NRP) report (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) by G. Camilli, S. Vargas, and M. Yurecko (2003); G. Camilli, P. M. Wolfe, and M. L. Smith (2006); and D. D. Hammill and H. L. Swanson (2006) that disagreed with the NRP on the magnitude of the effect of systematic phonics instruction. Using the coding of the NRP studies by Camilli et al. (2003, 2006), multilevel regression analyses show that their findings do not contradict the NRP findings of effect sizes in the small to moderate range favoring systematic phonics. Extending Camilli et al. (2003, 2006), the largest effects are associated with reading instruction enhanced with components that increase comprehensiveness and intensity. In contrast to Hammill and Swanson, binomial effect size displays show that effect sizes of the magnitude found for systematic phonics by the NRP are meaningful and could result in significant improvement for many students depending on the base rate of struggling readers and the size of the effect. Camilli et al. (2003, 2006) and Hammill and Swanson do not contradict the NRP report, concurring in supporting comprehensive approaches to reading instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construct validity of English and Spanish phonological awareness (PA) tasks was examined with a sample of 812 kindergarten children from 71 transitional bilingual education program classrooms located in 3 different types of geographic regions in California and Texas. Tasks of PA, including blending nonwords, segmenting words, and phoneme elision, were measured in Spanish and in English and analyzed via multilevel confirmatory factor analysis at the task level. Results showed that the PA tasks defined a unitary construct at both the student and classroom levels in each language. English and Spanish PA factors were related to each other (.93 and .83 at the student and classroom levels, respectively) as well as to word reading, both within languages (correlations estimated between .74 and .93) and across languages (correlations estimated between .47 and .79). Although the PA constructs were statistically separable in each language, the high correlation between Spanish and English PA indicates considerable overlap in these abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second- and 3rd-grade children with poor word-level skills were randomly assigned to S months of explicit instruction emphasizing the phonologic and orthographic connections in words and text-based reading or to remedial reading programs provided by the schools. At posttest, treatment children showed significantly greater gains than control children in real word and nonword reading, reading rate, passage reading, and spelling, and largely maintained gains at a 1-year follow-up. Growth curve analyses indicated significant differences in growth rate during the treatment year, but not during the follow-up year. Results indicate that research-based practices can significantly improve reading and spelling outcomes for children in remedial programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]