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Research examining effective reading interventions for students with reading difficulties in the upper elementary grades is limited relative to the information available for the early elementary grades. In the current study, we examined the effects of a multicomponent reading intervention for students with reading comprehension difficulties. We employed a partially nested analysis with latent variables to adequately match the design of the study and provide the necessary precision of intervention effects. We examined the effects of the intervention on students' latent word reading, latent vocabulary, and latent reading comprehension. In addition, we examined whether these effects differed for students of varying levels of reading or English language proficiency. Findings indicated the treatment significantly outperformed the comparison on reading comprehension (ES = 0.38), but no overall group differences were noted on word reading or vocabulary. Students' initial word reading scores moderated this effect. Reading comprehension effects were similar for English learner and non-English learner students. [This article was published in "Journal of Educational Psychology" (EJ1160638).]

In order to examine the effectiveness of instruction, the authors confront formidable statistical problems, including multivariate structure of classroom observations, longitudinal dependence of both classroom observations and student outcomes. As the authors begin to examine instruction, classroom observations involve multiple variables for which they need valid measurement models. These classrooms, however, involve students who are not only growing, but typically switching classrooms each year. While measurement models for multiple variables are commonplace as confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and individual student growth can be modeled under switching classrooms with multilevel analysis software, connecting these two types of models is currently challenging and limited. Consequently, it becomes difficult to jointly examine two types of important substantive questions. First, the authors are interested in the nature of instruction: to what extent can they fit a measurement model which is consistent over time and what might that say about teachers and classrooms with respect to the stability of instructional quality? Second, how might instructional quality relate to student growth, given changing classrooms essentially every year? In order to answer these two substantive questions, the authors can fit a model of instructional observations, a model of student growth, and then join these two models. The authors present an empirical example involving a cohort sequential design of 13,236 students over three years (grades 1-3), nested in 974 classrooms, 762 teachers, in 146 schools. The measurement properties of the classroom observations were strong, with good fit and high validity coefficients (loadings). The instructional factors suggest an increase in quality and homogeneity across grades. Issues for future investigation include missing data, clustering due to teachers, and instructional carryover effects across years. Figures are appended.

This study estimates program effects (English immersion versus primary language instruction using varying degrees of Spanish) upon English and Spanish word identification in the context of changing classrooms (cross-classification) from kindergarten through second grade. Letter-word identification is an important predictor of early reading achievement (Scarborough, 2001, 2005). In particular, the authors are interested in classroom and school differences not merely as noise to be removed, but as indicators of substantively important differences in implementation and practice. The student participants were 1,991 children (49% female) taught by 421 teachers across the 3 years of the longitudinal project, kindergarten to second grade. Seventy-five percent of the families reported earning less than $30,000 per year, and 79% had foreign-born fathers. Results suggest that in English, Spanish language instruction may facilitate the learning of English over time, as evidenced by the maintenance programs catching up to the English performance of the immersion programs. In Spanish letter-word identification, immersion programs show improving performance over time, but at a slower pace than the Spanish maintenance programs. These program-by-time interactions, however, are not completely correct and will require further verification. (Contains 4 figures and 3 tables.)

This study examined the extent to which literacy is a unitary construct, the differences between literacy and general language competence, and the relative roles of teachers and students in predicting literacy outcomes. Much of past research failed to make a distinction between variability in outcomes for individual students and variability for outcomes in the classrooms students share (i.e., the classroom level). Utilizing data from 1,342 students in 127 classrooms in Grades 1 to 4 in 17 high-poverty schools, confirmatory factor models were fit with single- and two-factor structures at both student and classroom levels. Results support a unitary literacy factor for reading and spelling, with the role of phonological awareness as an indicator of literacy declining across the grades. Writing was the least related to the literacy factor but the most impacted by teacher effects. Language competence was distinct at the student level but perfectly correlated with literacy at the classroom level. Implications for instruction and assessment of reading comprehension are discussed.