Research supports the efficacy of intensive literacy instruction for children with moderate intellectual disabilities and Down syndrome (DS). However, much of the literature features measures closely aligned with evaluated interventions. Despite their increasing role in instruction, curriculum-based measures (CBM) are rarely featured in reading…

Parents of three second-grade students identified as at-risk readers were trained to tutor their children. The reading interventions were either accuracy (i.e., modeling and phrase drill) or proficiency (i.e., repeated reading and reward). Intervention selection was based on predicted level of the instructional hierarchy. Students reading below 32…

The existence of an achievement gap in the academic performance among various subgroups of students is a well-documented phenomenon in American public education (Blackford & Khojasteh, 2013; "Education Week," 2004; Hayes & Grether, 1969; Hernandez, 2011; National Center for Educational Statistics, 2015). This is certainly the…

The 3-year Pennsylvania Dyslexia Screening and Early Literacy Intervention Pilot Program (Pilot) began in 2015-16 (Year 1) with the kindergarten class of 2015-16 (Cohort 1). In 2016-17 (Year 2), the Pilot was implemented with Cohort 1 students, now in first grade, and a second cohort of kindergarteners (Cohort 2). A third cohort will be added in…

Reading is a skill that is necessary to be successful both academically and professionally in today's society. Thus, it is essential that educators work with students to develop their reading skills and help them become proficient readers (Otto, 2008). This study concurrently implemented a phonics-based reading intervention and a sight-word…

The current study was completed through a retrospective analysis of school records of elementary school students in the Northeast Region of the Philadelphia School District (PSD) who have participated in the Fast ForWord (FFW) Language program. The data requested from student records included: demographic information (e.g., gender, grade, age,…

Staff development training is a method many public schools employ in an effort to prepare their teaching staff to better meet the demands of effectively educating district students. In this mixed methods case study quantitative and qualitative data was incorporated to answer four research questions: (1) How accurately do scores achieved by…

Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs) have advanced and matured, a number of states and localities have undertaken evaluations to validate the systems. Such efforts stem from the desire to ensure that the system is designed and operating in the ways envisioned when the system was established. Given that a central component in a QRIS…

This study examines changes in parent support and child emergent literacy skills over time as children moved from Head Start into kindergarten. It compares the transactional parent-child influences in families randomly assigned in Head Start to receive an enriched home visiting program that emphasized parents as teachers relative to a control…

Randomized field trials were used to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group, a professional development model, on first grade teachers' reading comprehension and vocabulary instruction, their knowledge of these areas, and on the corollary comprehension and vocabulary achievement of their students. The multi-site study was conducted during…

This is school climate study of the Center for Civic Education's School Violence Prevention Demonstration Program at Ritter Elementary School in Allentown, Pennsylvania for the academic year 2006-7. Ritter, like most of Allentown's schools, is a majority-minority school. Hispanic, African American, Middle Eastern, and immigrant students outnumber…

A major commitment of the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities (NRCLD) has been to work with school sites that are implementing RTI. The work with these schools began in November 2002 after the U.S. Department of Education requested that NRCLD identify, describe, and evaluate the implementation of responsiveness to intervention (RTI)…

Considerable variation exists across response-to-intervention (RTI) approaches. There is currently insufficient research on outcomes associated with these different RTI approaches to inform decision-making. However, school psychologists who are asked to work within an RTI model need guidance to select an approach that has a high likelihood of…