If We Don’t Know
“Why,” We Can’t Know “What”
[CLICK HERE to Read the Entire Blog Message]
Dear
Colleagues,
Introduction
Last month, I was asked to lead
an Invited Workshop on “Academic Interventions for Struggling Students” at the
annual convention of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) in
Baltimore. Most of my focus was on the millions of children and adolescents
nationwide who are struggling—if not failing—in reading and literacy.
While this was my third
consecutive year to give this NASP convention presentation, I prepared the same
way I always prepare: Making believe that I had never given this
presentation before. That is, I
re-reviewed the research, re-googled to find new perspectives, and re-thought
my past approaches to the topic.
But. . . for all the “new”
research and perspectives in reading instruction and intervention, not much has
changed. To summarize the “state of the
field”—and to revisit some of the themes from Part I of this Blog Series—the
following points are evident:
- Too many students—especially those living in
poverty—enter school with fewer early literacy experiences (at home and/or
because they did not attend preschool) and fewer prerequisite literacy skills
(e.g., phonemic awareness and receptive/expressive language). . . and some
never catch up.
_ _ _ _ _
-
Too many students are not getting sound, evidence-based,
and differentiated core instruction in reading. . . and this necessitates
reading interventions that would not be necessary if these students had
originally received effective instruction.
I call these students
“Instructional Casualties,” and yes, the statement above is circular.
Critically, most of these
students can learn to read, they just are not getting the
opportunities (through effective instruction) to learn to read.
_ _ _ _ _
- Too many teachers, especially at the Elementary
school level, are developing literacy lessons alone, in PLCs, or from the
internet, and too many schools are purchasing reading series that do not use
the established cognitive science underlying effective literacy instruction.
When these reading lessons are
taught in the absence of a well-sequenced literacy scope and sequence, and/or when
they are delivered inconsistently by teachers at the same grade level, students
do not learn or become proficient readers immediately or over time.
While most published reading
series typically provide the scope and sequence roadmaps that result in more
consistent instruction, these curricula often focus more on the organization
and delivery of their lessons, and less on the criteria of learning and
mastery, how to sensitively evaluate for learning and mastery, and what to do
when learning and mastery does not occur. Thus, delivery is valued more than
student learning outcomes.
Critically, when instruction does not focus
on producing student skill and content mastery, teachers often are satisfied
with delivering the curriculum, rather than educating proficient
readers.
When students fail here, they are considered
“Curricular Casualties.” As above, most of these students can learn to
read, they just are not getting the opportunities (due to ineffective
curricula) to learn to read.
_ _ _ _ _
- When students demonstrate persistent or significant
reading struggles, too many schools continue to use an archaic
“response-to-intervention” framework, and they do not effectively utilize a
data-based problem-solving process that links the functional assessment of
students’ literacy skills and deficits to multi-tiered services, supports,
strategies, and interventions.
[CLICK HERE for our free monograph, A Multi-Tiered Service
& Support Implementation Blueprint for School & Districts: Revisiting
the Science to Improve the Practice]
_ _ _ _ _
- Students continue to be identified (or not
identified) as having learning disabilities in reading using, for example,
discrepancy or patterns of strength and weakness formulas that have never been
validated.
_ _ _ _ _
- Many students found “eligible” for special education
services as students with “reading disabilities,” do not have disabilities.
These students are typically
Instructional Casualties, Curricular Casualties, Early (or No) Intervention
Integrity Casualties, or they are “qualified” as “students with disabilities”
by Special Education Eligibility Teams because their schools have no other way
to get them more intensive (and needed) interventions.
_ _ _ _ _
- For most students who have legitimate reading
disabilities, they are still more—relative to pedagogy, instruction, learning,
and mastery—like their typical peers than unlike them.
_ _ _ _ _
- The historical lack of an “aptitude by treatment”
interaction persists.
That is, there are no valid or
established diagnostic reading deficiency patterns—psycho-educationally,
neuro-linguistically, or neuro-psychologically—that automatically link to specific
skill-focused interventions or curriculum-focused intervention
programs/packages.
This means that most reading
interventions need to be conceptualized as “controlled science experiments”
that (a) are initially implemented in a “small-scale” way; (b) have clear
short- and long-term criteria defining their success; (c) use formative and
summative assessments that are sensitive to these criteria; and that (d) do not
“scale-up” until the objective data validate their efficacy.
_ _ _ _ _
- Finally, when educators search for “evidence-based”
literacy interventions, they are “rewarded” with a “scavenger hunt in
purgatory.”
The What Works Clearinghouse
(WWC) and other U.S. Department of Education-funded National Technical
Assistance Centers have identified precious few literacy interventions that
successfully remediate student deficits in the five recognized areas of
reading.
Moreover, the different Practice
Guides produced by the WWC are OK, but they don’t reveal any dramatic
intervention suggestions for anyone who is knowledgeable in this area.
_ _ _ _ _
A Brief Review of Part I
In Part I of this
Blog Series, we discussed the “new and current” rush of policy, publication,
media, and legal attention to the quality of literacy instruction—and student
outcomes—in our nation’s schools.
While triggered by the
most-recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, the
impact of this persistent problem area has been recently reinforced by:
- A February 20, 2020 legal settlement whereby the
state of California agreed to provide $53 million for early literacy
instruction to resolve a 2017 lawsuit asserting that petitioning students’ constitutional
rights were violated when schools failed to teach them to read.
- An influx of state legislatures that are passing
laws requiring pre-service and classroom teachers to be taught—and to
demonstrate their proficiency in—the science of reading.
- Two recent national surveys that
revealed how many school principals—especially in schools serving more students
of color—felt that they were not fully supporting students with disabilities, and
that they felt unprepared to meet these students’ needs.
The Part I Blog next cited a recent
(December 4, 2019) series of articles in Education Week, “Getting
Reading Right,” that documented these and other problems in literacy training
and instruction.
Implicitly, these articles emphasized that
the current national discussion and all of the policy, practice, legislative,
and training/professional development efforts to date are missing three
critical factors:
- We are not conceptualizing literacy instruction and
students’ reading proficiency within a systemic, ecological, multi-factored,
and multi-tiered continuum that is built on evidence-based blueprints.
- We are developing and implementing policies,
procedures, processes, and practices in disorganized, segmented, and disparate
ways such that “whole has holes, and the parts never add up to a whole.”
- We are not effectively using the psychoeducational
research relative to child development, learning and cognition, psychometrics
and assessment, and data-based decision-making and evaluation.
The rest of this Part I Blog
presented six essential blueprints that must be interdependently considered
when “piecing together” a sound multi-tiered system of literacy instruction and
supports.
These blueprints included the
following:
- Blueprint 1: The Principles Underlying
Effective Educational Policy
- Blueprint 2: A Psychoeducational
Science-to-Practice Blueprint for Effective Literacy Instruction and
Multi-Tiered Services and Supports
- Blueprint 3: Understanding the
Instructional Environment and Its Contribution to Student Reading Proficiency
- Blueprint
4. The Data-based
Problem-Solving Blueprint for Struggling and Failing Readers
- Blueprint
5. The Seven High-Hit
Reasons Why Students Struggling or Fail in Reading
- Blueprint
6: The Multi-tiered Positive Academic Supports and Services
Continuum
In Part II of this Blog Series,
we will discuss the multi-tiered questions (from Blueprint 4) needed to address
the needs of struggling readers and students with reading disabilities, and the
state of literacy intervention (linking Blueprint 5 and Blueprint 6).
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Literacy Problem Identification and
Critical Analysis Questions
In Part I, we outlined the four
data-based problem-solving components within our multi-tiered systems of
support. We also noted that, while the data-based problem-solving process analyzes the three
components of the Instructional Environment (the Teacher-Instructional,
Curriculum, and Student components, respectfully), it also ecologically
analyzes Classroom and Peer, School and District, and Home and Community
factors.
The four data-based problem-solving
blueprint steps are:
- Functional, Diagnostic, or Root Cause
Problem Analysis
- Services, Supports, Strategies,
Interventions, or Programs
- Progress Monitoring/Formative and
Summative Outcomes-Based Evaluation
_ _ _ _ _
Relative to Problem
Identification, one of the first steps is a comprehensive interview with a struggling
student’s current and past teacher(s), parents/guardians, and others (e.g.,
literacy coaches or intervention specialists) who have worked with the student.
We have developed a
Problem Identification Interview protocol to guide this process. It can
be found in our comprehensive monograph:
A Multi-Tiered Service and Support Implementation
Guidebook for Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap
[
CLICK
HERE to Review (and potentially purchase) this Best-Selling publication.
Use Code
15%OFF through April 10th for 15% Off!!!]
_ _ _ _ _
Another essential
Problem Identification activity, when students are demonstrating significant or
prolonged reading struggles, is to determine what content and skills they have
learned, mastered, and are able to independently apply in the five areas of
literacy (phonemic awareness, phonetic decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and
comprehension). This is accomplished by integrating the data from classroom
performance and assessments, diagnostic assessments, interim and progress
monitoring assessments, and high stakes proficiency assessments.
When students’ current mastery levels are
graphed or “plotted”—with these data—across a sound grade-level-anchored
literacy scope and sequence, the differences between their current functioning
and their grade-level placements identify the “gap” between where they are and
where they should be.
For example, if a student is in the middle
of fifth grade but is functioning at the beginning third grade level in
decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and
comprehension, then that student is approximately two skill years behind
grade-level expectations.
Functionally, when given beginning of third
grade reading passages, this student will be reading and understanding the
vocabulary and comprehension questions in that passage at a 90 percent or above
criterion level (at least at the 50th percentile). When given beginning of fourth grade or fifth
grade, respectively, passages to read, the same student will show progressively
less skill proficiency. . . for example, at the 25th percentile for the fourth grade material, and
at the 10th percentile for the fifth grade material.
_ _ _ _ _
Relative to Problem Analysis, the
primary goal is to complete a root cause analysis of a student’s past and
present Instructional Environments (i.e., the Teacher-Instructional,
Curriculum, and Student components, respectfully), and ecological analyses of
the Classroom and Peer, School and District, and Home and Community components
in a student’s past and present “literacy life.”
In most cases, root cause analyses of the
Instruction Environment result in causal explanations. . . that identify
the goals of the intervention process.
For example, if a teacher is not effectively
teaching the student literacy skills, or is not implementing a classroom
modification with fidelity, the interventions should focus on changing the
teacher’s instructional interactions which should, concomitantly, improve the
student’s learning and mastery.
In most cases, ecological analyses of the
other components result in correlational, contributory, or contextual
explanations. . . that identify supportive goals for the intervention process.
For example, if a student struggles to learn
in a school averaging 25 students for each teacher, or comes from a low
socio-economic status home that can’t many books. . . the intervention is not
to change the student-to-teacher ratio (especially when most other students are
progressing, and district budgets are uncompromising), or to provide books for
the home (especially when other students experiencing similar economic
conditions are learning to read).
The first scenario’s intervention might
include (a) providing the student preferential seating to minimize the impact
of the large (but not unprecedented) number of students in the classroom; (b)
ensuring that the teacher is periodically using small group, differentiated
instruction; and/or (c) teaching the student attention-control strategies such
that s/he focuses more on the instruction, and less on the number of students
in the room.
The second scenario’s intervention might
include (a) teachers’ previewing each unit (in English—as well as in other
courses that depend on independent reading) with the student to ensure that
s/he has the prerequisite literacy skills, content, or experiential
knowledge—and closing any gaps through remediation as needed; (b) providing
tutoring for the student to close larger or more prominent gaps; and/or (c)
giving the student additional “free reading” time at school, while encouraging
him/her to use the school library or computer-based support programs.
The point here is: Most Classroom and
Peer, School and District, and Home and Community correlational effects are
addressed through interventions addressing one or more Teacher-Instructional,
Curriculum, and/or Student factors.
_ _ _ _ _
To briefly expand: The Instructional
Environment root cause analysis focuses on evaluating a student’s longitudinal
history of literacy learning and mastery from preschool to the present. The
goal is to determine why the student is (has) experiencing(ed)
underachievement, poor achievement, slow achievement, or no achievement in (as
relevant) the five areas of literacy.
When completing this root cause analysis,
there are a series of standard questions that frame the assessment for the
three Instructional Environment components. These questions help to guide the
assessments that are conducted, and the conclusions that are drawn.
[CLICK HERE to Read the Entire Blog Message with these
essential questions.]
_ _ _ _ _
Once again, all of
the Instructional Environment Root Cause Analysis questions can be found
in our comprehensive monograph:
A Multi-Tiered Service and Support Implementation
Guidebook for Schools: Closing the Achievement Gap
[
CLICK HERE
to Review (and potentially purchase) this Best-Selling publication. Use Code
15%OFF
through April 10th for 15% Off!!!]
_ _ _ _ _
Linking the Seven High-Hit Reasons Why Students
Struggle in Reading with Intervention Actions
In Part I of this
Blog Series, we identified the seven high-hit student-centered reasons why
students struggle in reading.
These were:
- High Hit #1: Skill Deficits. The student
has skill deficits in critical areas of reading. She or he has either not been
exposed to effective reading curricula or instruction, or she or he is not
learning successfully.
- High Hit #2: Speed of Acquisition. The
student is learning, but his/her speed of learning and mastery is slower than
other students—either relative to instruction in-the-moment, or instruction
over the long-term.
- High Hit #3: Generalization. The student
is learning discreet, specific, or isolated skills, but she or he is not
blending, integrating, transferring, applying, or generalizing these skills
such that—ultimately—she or he is able to decode, read fluently, understand
vocabulary, and/or derive meaning and comprehension from text.
- High Hit #4: Conditions of Attribution or
Emotionality. The student does not believe that she or he can successfully
learn to read, or she or he is experiencing a high enough level of emotionality
around some or many parts of the reading (or assessment) process, and this is
undermining his or her progress and proficiency.
- High Hit #5: Motivation. The student is
not motivated to learn to read. The student has the capacity to learn, or has
learned literacy skills in the past, but (now) is not choosing to learn.
- High Hit #6: Inconsistency. The student
has or is experiencing (typically) instructional, curricular, or motivational inconsistency
that has or is undermining the literacy learning and mastery process.
- High Hit #7: Special Situations. Some
special, significant, intense, unique, or individualized situation or
circumstance is present that is interfering with the students’ learning.
These situations may require (a) different instructional
approaches to reading and/or intensive interventions (e.g., dyslexia); (b) the
use of technology-based assistive supports (e.g., students with traumatic brain
injured or cerebral palsy); or (c) the recognition that certain reading skills
may never be learned but that, through compensatory strategies, literacy (i.e.,
the comprehension of text) can.
_ _ _ _ _
While some students have a combination of
these high-hit reasons, the primary intervention approaches that link to these
high-hit reasons are depicted in the Figure below.
These links are:
- High Hit #1: Skill Deficits. Interventions
here must involve teaching the specific literacy skills that the student has
not been taught, has not been taught effectively, or has not learned and
mastered. Among the primary intervention questions are: (a) how and where the
student will learn these unlearned skills; (b) who will provide the
instruction; and (c) what instructional intensity will be needed (e.g., how
many days per week, and minutes per day).
- High Hit #2: Speed of Acquisition.
Assessments in this area must determine if the student is learning as fast as
s/he is able—given his/her cognitive ability and/or learning capacity.
For example, some students can only make, for example,
eight months of academic progress for every ten months in school. They cannot
learn any faster. Indeed, any attempts to “help” them learn more quickly will
not only fail, but may introduce a level of frustration that will actually
impair their learning and learning speed.
The “intervention” for these students is to continue to
teach them at their instructional/mastery level, and let them continue to
progress at their own rate.
Other students in this high-hit area will respond to
interventions that will help increase their learning speed. Depending on the
root cause assessment results, these interventions most often involve skill
remediation, learning approach accommodations, or curricular modifications (see
below).
- High Hit #3: Generalization. Interventions
here assist students, who are learning discreet, specific, or isolated skills,
to blend, integrate, transfer, apply, or generalize these skills such
that—ultimately—they able to decode, read fluently, understand vocabulary,
and/or derive meaning and comprehension from text.
- High Hit #4: Conditions of Attribution or
Emotionality. Interventions here focus on decreasing or eliminating
students’ negative beliefs, expectations, or attributions, and/or the stress or
emotionality associated with all or part of the reading process. This helps students
believe they can successfully (learn to) read, and/or “frees” them up so they
can learn and read without any emotional interference.
- High Hit #5: Motivation. Interventions
here directly address the reason(s) why a student is not motivated to learn to
read, or to use or apply literacy skills that have already been learned and
mastered. There are a number of long-standing and very effective motivational
interventions for students. The question is which one has the highest
probability of success given the student’s history, attributions, and
preference for certain incentives and/or consequences.
- High Hit #6: Inconsistency. Interventions
here must be connected with the root cause and data-based functional assessment
as this is typically a very complex area of concern. Briefly, though,
interventions here work to (a) decrease or eliminate the instructional,
curricular, or other inconsistencies identified, (b) re-establish a positive
learning trajectory, while overcoming the skill and/or motivational impact and
“history” of the past inconsistency, and (c) fade the interventions over time
so that students progress over time without the need for external services or
supports.
- High Hit #7: Special Situations.
Interventions here are typically the most multi-faceted and/or complex.
Depending on the results of the analyses, interventions here may require (a)
different instructional approaches to reading and/or intensive interventions
(e.g., dyslexia); (b) the use of technology-based assistive supports (e.g., students
with traumatic brain injured or cerebral palsy); or (c) the recognition that
certain reading skills may never be learned but that, through compensatory
strategies, literacy (i.e., the comprehension of text) can.
For some students, as alluded to above, there are no
interventions to “fix” their literacy skill gaps or disabilities. They can
be literate, however. That is, they can learn to use compensatory strategies
and/or technology-based assistive supports such that they can comprehend and
derive full meaning from text.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _
Blueprint
6: The Positive
Academic Supports and Services (PASS) Continuum
As initially discussed in Part I
of this Blog Series, grounded by effective, differentiated classroom
instruction with well-designed progress monitoring and evaluation, the PASS
continuum identifies services, supports, strategies, interventions, and programs—at
different, student-needed levels of intensity—to address the root causes when
students are struggling or failing to master different facets of literacy.
The PASS continuum consists of
the following (see also the Figure below):
[CLICK HERE to Read the Entire Blog Message where these
instruction- and intervention-related components are described.]
_ _ _ _ _
Critically, there
are numerous components and strategies embedded in each of the areas above.
Only through a comprehensive professional development experience—that includes
using real case studies to demonstrate how to link assessment to specific
multi-tiered services, supports, strategies, and interventions—can school
personnel truly learn and build their sustained skill and capacity to address
the needs of struggling students.
For districts and
schools interested in discussing this professional development, please contact
me at any time:
knoffprojectachieve@earthlink.net.
Beyond this, while
there is a sequential nature to the components within the PASS continuum, it is
a strategic and fluid—not a lock-step—blueprint. That is, the supports and services are
utilized based on students’ needs and the intensity of these needs. For example, if reliable and valid
assessments indicate that a student needs immediate accommodations to be
successful in the classroom, then there is no need to implement remediations or
modifications just to “prove” that they were not successful. In addition, there are times when students
will receive different supports or services on the continuum
simultaneously. For example, some
students will need both modifications and assistive supports in order to be
successful. Thus, the supports and services
within the PASS are strategically applied to individual students.
Beyond this, while
it is most advantageous to deliver needed supports and services within the
general education classroom (i.e., the least restrictive environment), other
instructional options could include co-teaching (e.g., by general and special
education teachers in a general education classroom), pull-in services (e.g.,
by instructional support or special education teachers in a general education
classroom), short-term pull-out services (e.g., by instructional support
teachers focusing on specific academic skills and outcomes), or more intensive
pull-out services (e.g., by instructional support or special education
teachers). These staff and setting
decisions are based on the intensity of students’ skill-specific needs, their
response to previous instructional or intervention supports and services, and
the level of instructional or intervention expertise needed.
Ultimately, the intervention
goal here is to provide students with early, intensive, and successful supports
and services that are identified through the data-based problem-solving
process, and implemented with needed integrity and intensity.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A Brief Note on Interventions
I have done extensive
research on different interventions at different grade levels for the five
areas of literacy. While descriptions of
these interventions are beyond the scope of this Blog Series, there are a
number of principles that are important to follow.
These principles
include:
- Diagnostic assessments and root cause analyses are
the most effective ways to determine why students are presenting with different
problems in literacy. When poor teacher/instructional processes or poor
curriculum design and student matching are the predominant root causes,
students may be struggling, but it is often not because they cannot learn.
When student characteristics or
factors are predominant, then more student-focused interventions likely are
needed.
_ _ _ _ _
- The historical lack of an “aptitude by treatment”
interaction persists.
That is, there are no valid or
established diagnostic reading deficiency patterns—psycho-educationally,
neuro-linguistically, or neuropsychologically—that automatically link to
specific skill-focused interventions or curriculum-focused intervention
programs/packages.
This means that most reading
interventions need to be conceptualized as “controlled science experiments”
that (a) are initially implemented in a “small-scale” way; (b) have clear short-
and long-term criteria defining their success; (c) use formative and summative
assessments that are sensitive to these criteria; and that (d) do not
“scale-up” until the objective data validate their efficacy.
_ _ _ _ _
- Depending on the root cause analysis results, some
students need skill-focused interventions—that focus on improving students’
literacy though the mastery of specific skills (e.g., how to decode specific
phonemes, what specific words mean in different contexts or applications, how
to answer specific types of comprehension questions, how to diagram the plot of
a complex novel).
Other students need
curriculum-focused interventions—that address students’ literacy gaps through
an alternative or strategically-designed curriculum (e.g., Direct Instruction,
Read Naturally, Leveled Literacy Instruction).
Still other students can
benefit from computer-assisted instruction/intervention (e.g., Lexia, Passport
Reading, Read 180).
Finally, some students need
more intensive interventions—like Reading Recovery or the Orton-Gillingham
approaches.
_ _ _ _ _
- The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and other
U.S. Department of Education-funded National Technical Assistance Centers have
identified precious few literacy interventions that successfully remediate
student deficits in the five recognized areas of reading.
Moreover, the different Practice
Guides produced by the WWC are OK, but they don’t reveal any dramatic
intervention suggestions for anyone who is knowledgeable in this area.
_ _ _ _ _
- Finally, there are some helpful intervention
websites already developed. See, for
example:
(Then link
to the Literacy Intervention Matrix)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Summary
Across the two
Blogs in this Series, we discussed six essential interdependent blueprints that must
be considered when “piecing together” a sound multi-tiered system of literacy
instruction and supports.
These blueprints included the
following:
- Blueprint 1: The Principles Underlying
Effective Educational Policy
- Blueprint 2: A Psychoeducational
Science-to-Practice Blueprint for Effective Literacy Instruction and
Multi-Tiered Services and Supports
The seven flaws and ten scientifically-based
practices that create an effective, comprehensive multi-tiered system of
supports for literacy.
- Blueprint 3: Understanding the
Instructional Environment and Its Contribution to Student Reading Proficiency
·
Teacher/Instructional Factors
·
Curriculum and Support Factors
·
Student Learning and Mastery Factors
- Blueprint 4. The Data-based Problem-Solving
Blueprint for Struggling and Failing Readers
- Blueprint 5. The Seven High-Hit Reasons Why
Students Struggling or Fail in Reading
- Blueprint
6: The Multi-tiered Positive Academic Supports and Services
Continuum
In this Part II, we went into
considerable detail relative to Blueprints 4, 5, and 6.
_ _ _ _ _
I hope that Part II of this Blog
Series has expanded on the most effective ways to conceptualize literacy
instruction in our schools, and to address students who are underachieving,
unresponsive, unsuccessful, disabled, and failing.
Clearly, this is a complex area
of education.
But that’s the point. Too many
are over-simplifying this complexity, and the result has been the continued
failure of thousands of students who are graduating (or dropping out of) high
school as functional illiterates.
I appreciate, as always, the
time that you invest in reading these Blogs, and your dedication to your
students, your colleagues, and the educational process.
Please feel free to send me your
thoughts and questions.
And please know that—even during
this time when many schools are closing due to the coronavirus pandemic—I am
continuing to work with schools and districts across the country remotely and
through video conference calls.
I would love to work with your
school or district. Contact me at any time.
Best,
Howie
[CLICK HERE to Read the Entire Blog Message]
