Jan. 28th ~ What We Know and Need to Know about Literacy Interventions for Elementary Students with Reading Difficulties and Disabilities, including Dyslexia
The Email That Keeps You Up to Date on Current Reading Research
Welcome! This is Volume 2, Issue No. 35
Welcome to the Reading Research Recap, a weekly newsletter featuring the latest reading research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The goal of the Recap is to share recent scientific findings and foster an appreciation of science as a way to navigate the world. I try to make this one of the most informative emails you get each week.
Announcements
Dear subscribers, After today the Reading Recap will look a little different. Instead of coming from Substack, you’ll get an email from me at Mailchimp. This is all part of the Elemeno merger with MetaMetrics, which allows me to dig deeper into the types of research I synthesize for you on a regular basis. I’m excited to offer you even more of what you’re after in my monthly Recap. Stay tuned, and let me know what you think; readers make the Reading Recap even better.
-Neena
What We Know and Need to Know about Literacy Interventions for Elementary Students with Reading Difficulties and Disabilities, including Dyslexia
“The purpose of this paper is to describe what we know and what we still need to learn about literacy intervention for children who experience significant difficulties learning to read. We reviewed 14 meta-analyses and systematic reviews of experimental and quasi-experimental studies published in the last decade that examined the effects of reading and writing interventions in the elementary grades, including research focused on students with reading difficulties and disabilities, including dyslexia. We attended to moderator analyses, when available, to further refine what we know and need to learn about interventions. Findings from these reviews indicate that explicit and systematic interventions focusing on the code and meaning dimensions of reading and writing, and delivered one-to-one or in small groups, are likely to improve foundational code-based reading skills, and to a lesser extent, meaning-based skills, across elementary grade levels. Findings, at least in the upper elementary grades, indicate that some intervention features including standardized protocols, multiple components, and longer duration can yield stronger effects. And, integrating reading and writing interventions shows promise. We still need to learn more about specific instructional routines and components that provide more robust effects on students’ ability to comprehend and individual differences in response to interventions. We discuss limitations of this review of reviews and suggest directions for future research to optimize implementation, particularly to understand for whom and under what conditions literacy interventions work best.”
Using National Data to Explore Online and Offline Reading Comprehension Processes
“Despite the common and growing use of and instruction on digital reading in schools, the ways in which reading comprehension may operate differently in paper and online environments are still underexplored. Using publicly available national datasets, we explore similarities and differences in how varied comprehension processes relate to each other in these spaces. Analyses using a Bayesian unidimensional graded response model found that paper-based reading performance involved hierarchical comprehension processes consistent with traditional theories of reading comprehension while digital hypermedia reading did not involve these same processes. This research provides usable knowledge for supporting researchers, and teachers in uncovering the unique educational benefits and challenges of online reading.”
Educators' perceptions of barriers and facilitators to the implementation of screeners for developmental language disorder and dyslexia
“Developmental language disorder (DLD) and dyslexia are common but under-identified conditions that affect children's ability to read and comprehend text. Universal screening is a promising solution for improving under-identification of DLD and dyslexia; however, we lack evidence for how to effectively implement and sustain screening procedures in schools. In the current study, we solicited input from educators in the United States around perceived barriers and facilitators to the implementation of researcher-developed screeners for DLD and dyslexia. Using thematic analysis, we identified barriers and facilitators within five domains: (1) features of the screeners, (2) preparation for screening procedures, (3) administration of the screeners, (4) demands on users and (5) screening results. We discuss these findings and ways we can continue improving our efforts to maximise the contextual fit and utility of screening practices in schools.”
The Remediless Reading Right
A legal Note from the Yale Law & Policy Review
Full Note link here
This deep dive is not a research paper, but rather a legal Note. Legal Notes are used to “summarize important cases interpreting a statute or regulation, giving you a more complete picture of how the law has been applied.” In this case, the note summarized important legal cases related to the “Right to Read” laws. The full note is open access via the link above, but since it is about 65 pages, I figure many people would not want to read it in detail, but instead, would prefer a summary. Also, a couple people responded to the survey I sent out a few weeks ago stating that they would like more policy/law covered in the Recap. So, it was perfect timing when I came across this!
The TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) version:
The author of this note (Shana Hurley) argues that students and families do not have adequate ways of holding their schools accountable for poor reading instruction. In the past, the courts did not decide in favor of students and families, stating there was not scientific consensus on what constitutes good instruction (among other reasons). However, now, there is much more consensus on what constitutes good reading instruction and the author argues that lawmakers need to make enforcement of “Right to Read” laws easier for students and their families.
Background
The author breaks the note into 3 sections: I’ll pull out the most interesting facts/items/highlights from each section below.
Part 1: Scientific and Statutory Developments
There is growing consensus among researchers that sound-based instruction is better than image-based instruction:
After centuries of “Reading Wars,” there is a first-time consensus concerning “how and when to begin and what to emphasize” for beginning readers. In the last three decades, scientists have rigorously analyzed the competing approaches to reading acquisition, sound-based (“phonics”) and image-based (“whole word instruction”). Scientists have found that almost all students can learn to read provided students are deliberately, systematically, and explicitly taught to identify letters’ corresponding speech sounds; blend those sounds into words; and recognize those words in their knowledge base.
But, this scientific consensus has not reached a wide audience:
Thus far, however, the law has failed to create the institutions needed to transmit the scientific knowledge and ensure its implementation. The challenge for public policy is to convey scientific insights so that teachers can best instruct children and are accountable for providing scientifically aligned high-quality instruction.
Rights for children with disabilities vs. rights for struggling readers
Children with disabilities have robust support and protection under federal law, but the same is not true for struggling readers who have not been identified as in need of special education services. Both federal and state legislatures and courts have let down struggling readers:
“Law could address this illiteracy crisis by creating an enforceable right to effective reading instruction and interventions, but it has not. At the federal level, Congress has failed to legislate, and federal courts have declined to establish a federal right to an education. State legislatures and high courts have taken steps to address the problem, but they have still failed to provide students with the quality of instruction and instructional support necessary to guarantee functional literacy.”
There is no channel for students or parents to challenge
The author points out that it is basically up to luck as to whether your concerns (as a parent of a struggling reader) are addressed by your teacher or school. This is because it is the teacher or school administrator’s choice as to what happens next when a parent issues a complaint. If the parent is unsatisfied with the school’s response, they can turn to their local education agency (but sometimes there isn’t one). Even if there is one, classroom instruction is is not grounds for issuing a grievance in some places (like New York City’s Department of Education). If the parent is still unsatisfied, they can file a complaint at the state level, but the author points out, again, that not all states have complaint procedures for addressing “individual reading concerns.” Even if all the agencies are in place, and have a process for issuing complaints, and the complaint was heard, the parent has no "private right of action to appeal and unsatisfactory outcome.”
Part 2: The Right to Read Warrants a Remedy
Litigation is widespread, but has not worked in the past for several reasons:
Educators, unlike other professionals, can’t be held liable for malpractice:
“Professionals in fields requiring comparable levels of education and discretion as educators—e.g., accountants, architects, and lawyers—are liable in tort for malpractice. By contrast, educators are not.”
The following two cases set a precedent that was held for a long time, but now should be re-examined given growing scientific consensus, the fact that illiteracy is a “cognizable injury” and that there are clearer state reading laws (such as in Mississippi).
Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District
In Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District, an 18 year old sued the school district because he graduated reading at a 5th grade level. The court did not find that his claim of negligence was viable for 4 reasons;
There was not agreement on what a child should be taught: “…education was too “fraught with different and conflicting theories” regarding “how or what a child should be taught.”
There was not proximate causation (basically, they said that many factors contribute to poor reading skill, not just instruction)
They didn’t believe that poor literacy was a “cognizable injury”
They were worried that if they ruled the school was negligent it would open the floodgates to “countless” claims
Donohue v. Copiague Union Free School District
Like Peter (in the above case), Donohue was allowed to advance grades without being properly assessed and graduated without being able to comprehend a basic job application.
They brought an educational malpractice case against his school district, but the courts concluded that the school district did not owe students a “duty of care.” They concluded this because:
“Establishing such a duty would require courts to “test the efficacy of educational programs and pedagogical methods” and “call upon jurors to decide whether [students] should have been taught one subject instead of another, or whether one teaching method was more appropriate than another, or whether certain tests should have been administered or test results interpreted in one way rather than another, and so on, ad infinitum.”160 It was “simply . . . not within the judicial function” for a court to “evaluate conflicting theories” about “how best to educate.”
What is interesting, though, is that the Court of Appeals did seem to agree with Donohue that educators, like other professionals, owed a duty to their students and that not being able to read did represent an injury. But, they also rejected the educational malpractice claim based on policy:
“Specifically, in an oft-repeated phrase, the Court of Appeals reasoned that a claim for educational malpractice would “require the courts not merely to make judgments as to the validity of broad educational policies” but also to “sit in review of the day-to-day implementation of these policies.”Such hands-on judging would threaten separation of powers between the courts, the legislature, and the executive branch and tread upon education duties conferred by the state constitution to courts’ coequal branches.”
Part 3: A Superior Public Enforcement Scheme
This “deep dive” is turning out to be way longer than I thought (maybe I was overconfident in thinking I could easily summarize a 65 page legal document!), so I’m going to keep this last section short.
I think the author’s main point for this section is that the time is ripe for better public enforcement channels of state reading laws:
“Centuries of Reading Wars are ending. Amid this détente, states have adopted robust regimes ensuring that students receive the science-based instruction they need to compete in an interdependent, knowledge-based economy. But states have failed to give children a way to enforce their statutory rights. And courts have relied on anachronistic policy arguments to deny students their day in court. When those dated policy considerations are removed, the law facially supports such private rights of action. But all students—especially low-income ones—would benefit from the addition of public enforcement.”
Thanks for reading!
~Neena
This is fantastic - thank you for doing this work~!~