Learning Disability Quarterly

Interventions for individuals with or at risk for reading disability (RD) need not occur only during the typical school day. Educators and researchers have been actively seeking opportunities to extend literacy learning through home-based, summer, and other tutoring programs. Nevertheless, alternative settings can pose greater difficulty with maintaining participation and ensuring high quality experiences. This introduction to a special issue on reading interventions delivered out-of-school explains the importance of exploring wraparound services and the reasons behind the challenges these forms of intervention face. It then summarizes the key purposes and findings of the three articles composing the special issue, which span early childhood as well as the school-age years.

The overall purpose of this study was to examine caregivers’ adherence to a storybook-reading intervention using latent class analysis (LCA). This study also examined whether adherence was related to child and family characteristics including children’s language ability, caregiver education, and whether the child has a disability. Caregivers of children with language impairment (N = 695) were provided with a book per week and were encouraged to read the book twice a week. Results of the LCA indicated that there were four profiles of caregivers’ adherence: sporadic, late dropout, completers, and early dropout. Completers were so-named because they adhered to study activities for the duration, completed the study as designed. These caregivers represented one third of participants, whereas dropouts (both early and late) represented the majority of caregivers (51%). This study found no reliable differences in the adherence patterns for caregivers of children with a disability and their typically developing peers. However, children who had better language skills also had significantly higher probability of continued caregiver adherence. Implications for educational research are discussed.

This study reports on the instruction provided in district-designed intensive summer reading programs. The Tier 3 intervention was provided to 374 students from 24 school districts who were not meeting the end of third-grade reading benchmarks; students were exiting third grade and entering fourth grade. Observations of the 40 classes were conducted near the beginning, middle, and end of the average 23 days of instruction, and analyzed to capture the proportion of time spent in various instructional groupings (e.g., whole class, small group) and components (e.g., phonological awareness, comprehension). Findings revealed that most time was spent in whole-class instruction, despite the need to offer students a more intensive intervention. Only two thirds of instructional time was spent specifically in reading-related activities. Approximately 30% of literacy instruction was code-focused (e.g., phonics), and 70% was meaning-focused (e.g., comprehension). The discussion addresses the alignment of observations with prior research on effective instruction and implications for designing future district-designed intensive summer reading programs.

Despite the vast research on the early predictors of mathematics achievement, little research has investigated the predictors of various domains of mathematics (e.g., geometry, statistics). The purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive relation between first-grade early numeracy and computation skills and third-grade mathematics achievement as measured by a state test. Furthermore, we explored the relations between these measures for students who were Below Proficient and Proficient. Findings suggest that proficiency level matters when examining the relation between mathematics skills. Also, there are different patterns of significant predictors depending on the domain of later mathematics achievement and whether or not reading achievement was considered. Findings are discussed in the context of mathematics learning for students with mathematics difficulty.

Standardized assessment of content knowledge for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) topics is pervasive in both K-12 and postsecondary institutions. Yet, most instruments are developed with little to no validation for students with learning disability (LD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness of new test instruments designed to assess conceptual understanding of statistics content and the extent to which construct-irrelevant factors, such as language processing, influence the performance of students with disabilities. Generalized linear mixed-effects modeling was used to identify the factors that were predictive of student performance. Results indicate that the average sentence length in word problems was uniquely predictive of student performance on emerging assessments of conceptual understanding. The results provide new evidence of the barriers facing students with disabilities on emerging tests of conceptual knowledge. A general framework for measuring the impact of these barriers and the effectiveness of accommodations is discussed.