Reading Interventions Delivered Outside of School: Introduction to the Special Issue

Reading ability is arguably one of the most important skills for academic success as well as success in life (Wood, Kiperman, Esch, Leroux, & Truscott, 2017). In formal educational settings through the elementary grades, more time is devoted to reading instruction than to any other subject (Hoyer & Sparks, 2017). Despite this significant investment, many students will struggle to achieve reading proficiency and may require multiple years of supplemental and intensive intervention (O’Connor, Bocian, Sanchez, & Beach, 2014). The causes and manifestations of reading disabilities (RD) are varied (Willems, Jansma, Blomert, & Vaessen, 2016), thus requiring multifaceted approaches to addressing them. For example, some reading difficulties could be prevented with interventions delivered in early childhood, while others are serious enough to warrant instruction during the summer months.

These out-of-school opportunities for delivering reading intervention would be consistent with a response to intervention (RTI) framework but would extend the time and settings in which the tiers of reading instruction and intervention would be provided. There is a practical appeal to capitalizing on every available opportunity to support individuals with or at risk for RD, but out-of-school interventions present challenges beyond those encountered in typical school settings. Chief among these is recruiting and retaining participants. Research studies conducted in summer programs typically experience low enrollment (about 50% of eligible participants) and high attrition (in excess of 40%; Denton, Solari, Ciancio, Hecht, & Swank, 2010). Similarly, a majority of caregivers asked to deliver literacy interventions at home reportedly do not maintain administering the practices over time (Justice, Skibbe, McGinty, Piasta, & Petrill, 2011). When implementing and researching interventions during a regular school day, compulsory education laws in the United States produce a large participant pool and corresponding mechanism for maintaining students’ attendance. These do not exist for out-of-school programs.

In addition to the difficulties with recruiting and retaining participants, there are challenges associated with those who typically teach in out-of-school programs. Issues with teacher quality have been documented in early childhood (Guo, Sawyer, Justice, & Kaderavek, 2013), and in summer (Reed, Schmitz, Aloe, & Folsom, 2016). Poor quality experiences can further discourage participation, but teacher effects also make it difficult to evaluate the potential of the programs to make an impact on individuals’ literacy learning (Weiss, 2010).

Finally, and of particular concern to the readership of Learning Disability Quarterly (LDQ), participants in out-of-school literacy programs are not reliably identified with RD. Young children who are not meeting emergent literacy milestones are likely to be placed in special education during elementary school, but they are rarely on an individualized education program (IEP) in preschool (Blackorby et al., 2010). During the elementary grades, students may participate in summer reading programs as a type of Tier 3 intervention for a school’s RTI model, but they may not yet be deemed eligible for an IEP (Reed et al., 2016).

Unquestionably, it is not acceptable to ignore individuals of any age for whom reading poses a significant challenge simply because it is not easy to serve them. The contributions to this special issue of LDQ address the various challenges of providing reading intervention in out-of-school settings and offer suggestions for how practitioners and researchers might improve the ways in which learning opportunities are structured. The articles are presented in a sequence leading from early childhood to the school-age years.

In the first article, Logan and Justice draw upon implementation science to explore caregivers’ completion of a home-based reading intervention. Rather than treating a lack of adherence to the program as a shortcoming of the caregivers, these researchers considered how well the program met the needs of the intended recipient families. Data collected through personal phone calls and postcard logs of intervention progress were used to create profiles of caregivers’ behavior. Logan and Justice also examined the child and family characteristics associated with these different patterns of behavior during the 30-week intervention study. Their results suggest that more varied means of communicating information to and different levels of support for families would improve adherence to program components.

Similar to caregivers, teachers have not consistently implemented effective instructional practices for teaching students with RD (Walker & Stevens, 2017). However, most observation studies have been conducted during the regular school year (e.g., Park, Brownell, Bettini, & Benedict, 2017), so little is known about how teachers use the intensive block of instructional time afforded during summer reading programs. Folsom, Reed, Aloe, and Schmitz conducted detailed coding of audio captured in 40 classrooms across 24 school districts implementing a summer intervention to students not reading proficiently at the end of Grade 3. Findings suggest that teachers spent the majority of the time on whole-group instruction and focused on comprehension-related activities, with little time devoted to foundational skills instruction. Given the low experience levels of the instructors, the authors concluded that more professional development and implementation support was necessary to achieve the intensity intended for the summer programs.

This special issue of LDQ was intended to provoke thought about the ways we are attempting to reach students with or at risk for RD before, during, and after their participation in typical schooling. Home-based, summer, and other tutoring programs can be challenging settings to implement interventions or realize improvements. Far from being a “nice to have” but not essential element of literacy education, these wraparound services can be essential to preventing reading failure (Morgan, Farkas, & Wu, 2011), school retention policies (Weyer, 2018), and even incarceration (Blomberg, Bales, Mann, Piquero, & Berk, 2011). Your thoughts and comments about the implications of this work are welcome.