Last chance to become readers: pre-referral interventions: comprehensive programs that provide short-term, explicit interventions for struggling students rather than referring them to special ed can have huge pay-offs.

About 45 fourth- and fifth-grade students were having serious reading problems. Time was running out. The students were about to be referred for three or more hours each of testing and observation on the way toward special education.

Was this the appropriate next step for the struggling readers? Current educational research and theory says maybe not. Significant numbers of students in special education could have avoided a disability label, and costly special education services, if they had been given specific instruction in reading (Lyon, 1998). In fact, many projects across the country have been successful with short-term interventions for students prior to conducting assessments to determine eligibility (Berninger, 2003; Foorman et al., 1998).

No Child Left Behind, Reading First and IDEA clearly direct schools to offer extra assistance before turning to special education. This district decided to find out if pre-referral intervention would work for them.

In May of 2002, the El Rancho Unified School District's department of Special & Alternative Education was awarded a grant of $2,000 through Region 11 Coordinating Council California Reading Initiative and Special Education. The proposal was to develop and implement a prevention/intervention program in literacy, specifically addressing students who were about to be referred for special education assessment for suspected learning disabilities.

Getting started

The funding from the small state grant paid for the consultant services of a reading professor at a local university, who designed the intervention protocol and assisted the district director in development of the criteria for the program. Resource specialists and speech-language specialists were selected as the professionals to implement the program. A new assessment instrument, GRADE (2001), published by American Guidance Services, was used to assess the students, since this tool allowed for pre- and post-testing of students over a relatively short time period.

Teacher training

A critical aspect of all intensive, explicit interventions is good teacher training and consistent instructional delivery (Berninger, 2003). AGS personnel trained elementary resource specialists, speech-language pathologists and school psychologists in the use of the GRADE. The faculty consultant trained the same staff in the intervention protocol. The protocol followed the precepts of the report "Put Reading First" (2001), incorporating the findings of the National Reading Panel on instructional effectiveness.

In this report, five building blocks of reading were identified: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension. Based upon the concepts in "Put Reading First," the NRP report and "California Reading Initiative and Special Education" (CDE, 1999), the project provided struggling readers with an intense diet of intervention in all five of these building blocks.

Regardless of individual scores on the pre-test, each of the project students received explicit, systematic reading instruction in all of the five areas every day. This was significantly different than the conventional approach in special education, which has been to remediate a deficit area. Reading in upper elementary grades is often predominately text comprehension, with almost no explicit assistance with phonics or fluency.

Seventeen activities that targeted each of the five areas were developed and taught to the resource/speech and language teaching teams. The teams had the freedom to arrange the daily hour of explicit instruction in any way that was meaningful for small groups of three to five students.

The last chance

Ten of the 12 elementary schools in the district participated. All were culturally diverse, low-performing urban schools in a district with a 98 percent Hispanic population. Five struggling fourth and fifth graders were selected and pre-assessed for the program at each site. Thirty-four students completed the program. Eighteen were identified as English language learners, 13 as English-only students and three had been designated fluent English. Reading instruction is often unavailable to upper elementary students, so we knew this might be their last chance to become readers before special education.

The resource specialist and speech-language pathologist teams at each site delivered the instruction fur one hour per day for nine weeks, for a total of 45 hours of instruction. Students were pre-tested and post-rested on the GRADE, level 2, which reflected the skill level at which the students were actually reading. Standard scores for vocabulary and comprehension subtests of level 2 were recorded, as well as a total test score and Growth Scale Value to allow statistical analysis of the scores.

What happened?

Although the teaching teams sensed that children were progressing in the daily intensive interventions, they did not realize how much improvement was taking place. They were all pleasantly surprised to find that the mean difference in pre- and post-test scores was 16.6 points in Growth Scale Value. A paired t- test analysis of mean differences from pre- to post-testing showed that the change was highly statistically significant (t = -6.5, df = 33, p <.01). Overall, the students experienced a significant increase in reading achievement.

Looking at reading levels of a nationally representative sample of second graders from the standardization of the GRADE as a comparison group, it was possible to have a control group. The conventional statistical format of a control group gave us a point of reference to evaluate our progress.

The target students median gain on the GSV was 20.5 points. This exceeded expectations for student change in reading (20 points) in one year of instruction at this level. The target group made one year of reading gains in six months. Further analysis of these results has shown that 11 of the 34 students (33 percent) scored at the ceiling of the vocabulary subtest in level 2, and therefore could not even show their more advanced skills oil GRADE, level 2.

In fact, not all of the gain was able to be measured since many students reached a ceiling on level 2 on the post-test and could have easily scored higher on level 3. GSV can be calculated and compared across levels, so this oversight can be rectified the next time we conduct the program.

What does it mean?

Using a norm-referenced diagnostic reading assessment to measure change, students at great risk for reading failure who participated in the reading intervention, administered by well-trained resource specialists and speech language pathologist, made one year's growth in reading in nine weeks, compared to a representative sample. The amount of reading improvement of these students was statistically significant at the .01 level.

During the course of the study, we also collected student interview information and data regarding perceptions of the specialists. A qualitative analysis will be completed on the student information and a quantitative analysis will be completed on the specialist information.

Our schools participated in a second nine-week round of the project during the winter and spring of 2003. Teaching teams have reported that it is much easier to implement the program the second time because they know it well and can make better transitions from one activity to the next.

Challenges

The greatest challenge was to ensure that all of the sites were following through on each aspect of the program. It was a comprehensive program--pre-testing, scheduling groups, conducting the intervention every day or noting any missed days, and finally post-testing.

We handled this challenge by asking one of the speech-language pathologists to function as the project coordinator. She called and followed up, and organized the process from school to school.

We also had concerns from the teacher teams that what they were doing was a departure from their usual special education service delivery model. Some found it very difficult to schedule the time, and others needed encouragement to continue for nine weeks to give the students the consistency and repetition that is necessary to learn.

What other benefits occurred?

Student interviews indicated that the fourth and fifth graders became more aware of themselves as readers. Anecdotal reports from teachers indicated that the students became more confident in their abilities. Both their skills and their stir-esteem increased. Identified students on the caseloads of the resource teachers and SLPs also benefited collaterally, as the specialists reported using some of the explicit interventions with these students.

Resource and SLPs learned about reading interventions together, and learned about each other's skills. Many were collaborative with their special education partner for the first time. Several remarked how they were able to observe students in this intensive intervention and gain more information about skill development than they would have gained from testing the same child.

As a group, the implementers remarked on how they became convinced that students do need more practice with skills than we usually allow time for. Repetition and routine literally supported the students toward reading improvement. Students began to take responsibility for some activities they were able to do with ease. They directed reading activities as the groups met each day and they learned what to expect and how to be successful.

So, would you do it all over again?

We were very pleased with the results of our study. To achieve student growth at the >. 01 level of significance in nine weeks is highly reassuring. While this was a viable alternative to special education, two of the 34 students ultimately did qualify for the special education program.

We believe that the program design was a solid foundation for a prevention/intervention program. It was based on scientific reading research and demonstrated effectiveness in both student learning and educator collaboration in our schools. It was indeed the last, best chance for these upper elementary students to be readers.

In an elementary principal's meeting in spring, the principals asked to keep the program the following year. The superintendent wanted to expand it. So do we. We will be organizing our training and working with general and special education staff to provide pre-referral intervention again next year.

We think we accomplished a lot with $2,000.

RELATED ARTICLE: Reading intervention program activities.

In each prevention/intervention session, each student will:

Phonemic awareness

1. Listen to three to five pages read aloud from a fiction book at grade level.

2. Engage in three PA activities orally, using words from the bunk.

3. Engage in a syllable activity, using words from the book (orally).

Phonics

4. List (write or say) all the words in the selection by number of syllables. Keep the list for further activities.

5. Complete a Making Words activity for three polysyllabic words from fiction book, selected by teacher. Complete three made by other students in class.

6. Create and then "do" the WordWall with assistance and direction for phonics activities (word families, phonograms, inflective endings, prefixes, suffixes).

Fluency

7. Read at independent reading level (95 percent accuracy) for five minutes. The book, magazine or story is self-selected if possible. Use his/her comprehension bookmark made earlier, updated as necessary.

8. Complete one "Reading Sounds Like Talking" activity with the group and with a partner.

Vocabulary

9. Make a list of compound words from the Read Aloud book selection. Make up a game of compounds with index cards. Play the game.

Fluency

10. Read a list of familiar words (horizontally) from the independent reading book at the rate of one per second. Count the number read correctly in one minute. Keep data on chart.

11. Read a list of less familiar words (horizontally) from the guided reading (Read Aloud) book rapidly and accurately. Skip any word not known and teacher will provide it. Count up the number read correctly in one minute. Keep date on chart.

12. "Chunk" five sentences from his/her independent reader. "Chunk" three more in a group activity from the book read aloud.

Text comprehension

13. Listen to a trade book (stray) read aloud. Complete story grammar marker orally, then in written form.

Fluency and sight vocabulary

14. Read a list of instant words (240). Add any two that were difficult to the WordWall. Remove any words no longer needed from the WordWall.

15. Select three challenging words for the Making Words activity for someone else in the group. Make it up and "bag it" for the next day.

Text comprehension

16. Read one paragraph of a grade-level text (any subject) for a specific purpose stated by the teacher. Read until the answer is found. Write the answer on a brightly colored sticky or book flag and place in book.

Reading and writing for meaning

17. Make a seven-page "little book" every day and enter the information needed.

--Judy Montgomery, 2002

References

Berninger, V.; Vermeulen, K.; Abbott, R.D.; McCutchen, D.; Cotton, S.; Cude, J.; Dorn, S.; Sharon, T. (2003). "Comparison of three approaches to supplementary reading instruction for low-achieving second grade readers." Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 34, 2, 101-116.

Foorman, B.; Francis, D.; Fletcher, J.; Schatschneider, C.; & Mehta, P. (1998). "The role of instruction in learning to read: preventing reading failure in at-risk children." Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 1-15.

California Reading Initiative and Special Education in California (1999). California State Board of Education. Sacramento: Author.

Lyon, G. R. (1998). "Overview of reading and literacy initiatives." Testimony provided to the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, United States Senate. Bethesda, Md: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Put Reading First. (2001). The Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA), National Institute of Literacy, U.S. Department of Education, Washington D.C.

Judy K. Montgomery is a professor, special education and literal., in the School of Education at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. Barbara Moore-Brown is director, special & alternative education, at El Rancho Unified School District in Pico Rivera.