Results
Student Outcomes
The layered design of data collection allowed us to compare the children with disabilities in the control group (same schools prior to intervention) at the end of third grade with the effect of a 3-tiered approach to intervention on the incidence and severity of RD. Descriptive statistics for the children identified as at risk and those identified with RD are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Third Grade Outcomes for Children Identified as At Risk** in kindergarten
| With Disabilities | Without Disabilities | ||
| Control
(n = 15) |
RD in Tiers 2 or 3
(n = 7) |
Tiers 2 or 3
(n = 15) |
|
| Word Identification | 86.4 (5.4) | 89.5 (9.4) | 101.1 (6.6) |
| Word Attack | 83.6 (7.5) | 99.3 (10.1) | 107.1 (7.6) |
| Comprehension | 81.5 (8.2) | 93.8 (14.5) | 104.6 (13.1) |
| Fluency | 34.2 (16.7) | 65.1 (25.7) | 111.3 (28.2) |
| PPVT-R | 95.3 (15.1) | 93.9 (9.6) | 105.3 (15.2) |
** Although 31 children were identified in kindergarten, the 9 kindergartners who received no additional assistance after kindergarten are not included here, as they were probably false positives in the selection process.
Student outcomes overall at the end of Grades 2 and 3. Professional development alone (Tier 1) improved reading outcomes significantly over the Control for Word Attack, Comprehension and Fluency in Grade 3 (F (2, 283) = 16.24, 9.97, 36.96, p < .01)). Scores on receptive language (PPVT-R) did not differ. By the end of third grade, effect sizes (Cohen's d) for professional development (Tier 1) over the Control for Word Identification, Word Attack, Reading Comprehension, and Fluency were .19, .34, .29, and .52, respectively.
Outcomes for students with disabilities. Descriptive statistics for children with and without disabilities who received Tiers 2 or 3 are shown in Table 1, along with children with disabilities in the Control from two years earlier. All of the children in Tiers 2-3 received additional direct intervention at some point during the K-3 years, and 9 students received it for all 4 years. As with the larger sample, direct early intervention (Tiers 2 and 3) for children with disabilities showed moderate to large effect sizes (Cohen's d) over the Control at the end of Grade 3 (.40, 1.8, 1.0, and 1.4, respectively, for Word Identification, Word Attack, Passage Comprehension, and Fluency). It is tempting to speculate on the stronger outcomes for children at risk who received Tiers 2 and or 3, but were not identified for special education. Would some of these children have been identified if early intervention had not been delivered? Given the small sample (about 100 children per grade), such speculation is premature.
Placement in Special Education
In the historical control group (same schools and teachers), the incidence of placement in special education averaged 15%. Following four years of participation in this research, the rate of placement was 12% in the professional development condition (Tier 1) and 8% in professional development plus direct intervention (Tiers 2-3). Across conditions, 1- 2% of students were eligible under the category of mental retardation, and the remainder under the category of learning disability (LD).
At the beginning and middle of second grade, we found considerable overlap in scores on the subtests of the WRMT-R between children who were later identified for special education and those who were not. May of Grade 2 was the first time point at which those eventually diagnosed with RD scored distinctly differently from others who struggled with reading acquisition. This difference was clear on the measures of oral reading fluency and comprehension, however we still found overlap on word attack and word identification into third grade.
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