Current Project Overview: Preventing Reading Difficulties

As virtually every educator knows, supporting young children's literacy development has become a major national focus. This focus derives, in large measure, from the findings of several studies indicating that:

• Children who are struggling with reading at the end of first grade (as compared with their same grade peers) are very likely to experience reading difficulties throughout their school careers and beyond.
• Children at risk for difficulty in early literacy development can be identified in kindergarten, prior to the initiation of "formal" reading instruction.
• Some recently developed instructional practices are quite effective in reducing the number of young children who experience difficulty in early literacy development.
• Many teachers feel poorly equipped to meet the needs of struggling literacy learners.
• What teachers know and can do is one of the best predictors of their students' academic success.

These generalizations have emerged from extensive research conducted at the Child Research and Study Center and elsewhere evaluating the causes and correlates of reading difficulties in young children. Center research has been primarily supported by external funds procured through grants from agencies such as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the U.S. Department of Education, and private foundations such as the Spencer Foundation, the Recording for the Blind, and the Lions Club among others. Researchers affiliated with the Center enjoy a national and international reputation, especially in the study of reading development and reading disability (dyslexia).

In recent years, research conducted at the Center has been primarily concerned with early identification and early intervention on behalf of children at risk for early reading difficulties and with the development of techniques and formats for preventing long-term reading difficulties in such children. Results from research conducted at the Center and elsewhere provide strong support for the view that most reading difficulties are caused by experiential and instructional inadequacies rather than biologically-based deficits negatively impacting cognitive abilities underlying the ability to learn to read. This research has also produced convergent evidence for important components of effective classroom and remedial literacy instruction and for effective procedures for identifying children at risk for early reading difficulties.

In response to these findings, the United States Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development have combined (financial and administrative) resources to support broader implementation of promising approaches to enhancing children's early literacy development and to study the circumstances under which such implementations are most effective. We have received a major grant under this funding initiative (officially termed the Interagency Educational Research Initiative or IERI) to support a large-scale longitudinal study designed to investigate how to most effectively implement an approach to preventing reading difficulties which we have been developing and testing for over ten years. We refer to this approach as the Interactive Strategies Approach. The Approach has implications for both classroom and remedial literacy instruction.

In implementing the project funded under the IERI grant, we have established partnerships with schools that are interested in improving the reading achievement of their primary grade students, particularly those students who struggle the most with the acquisition of reading skills. More specifically, the project offers participating schools one of three ways to implement the Interactive Strategies Approach to improving early literacy achievement. All three involve direct benefits to young children, in the form of either enhanced classroom instruction, intensive remedial intervention services, or both.

The primary purpose of the project is to compare the relative effectiveness of each of these methods of implementation in reducing the incidence of early literacy difficulties and improving early literacy success overall. Accordingly, schools with which we established partnerships were (randomly) assigned to participate in one of these three methods:

• Intensive Intervention: This method involves providing children who are at risk for experiencing difficulty with reading acquisition with small group instructional support in kindergarten and, if needed, daily one-to-one tutoring in first grade.
• Professional Development for Classroom Teachers: This method involves providing kindergarten and first grade classroom teachers with professional development services which will help them to develop greater expertise in identifying and responding to children's instructional needs as they relate to early literacy development.
• Intensive Intervention Plus Professional Development: The third method involves combining the first two. Thus, at risk kindergarten and first grade children in schools involved in this method will be provided with instructional support their classroom teachers will be provided with professional development in early literacy instruction.