The purpose of this study was to verify the procedures needed to implement the school-based response-to-intervention(RTI) as a means for differentiating between children with and without reading disabilities and also to investigate the characteristic...
The purpose of this study was to verify the procedures needed to implement the school-based response-to-intervention(RTI) as a means for differentiating between children with and without reading disabilities and also to investigate the characteristics of the children who were identified to have reading disabilities while implementing the RTI in the school. To meet the study purpose, two questions were raised as follows: (1) whether there were any differences in the achievement level and progress speed between the children with reading disabilities and slow learners during the period of intensive training; (2) whether there were any differences in the achievement level and progress speed in the areas of phonological awareness, word recognition, naming speed, and comprehension task between the two groups.
This study conducted a research on 163 first grade children and was carried out for 6 months from September, 2008 to February, 2009. The two-tier response-to-intervention program was carried out with the following procedure: In the Tier 1, all of the 163 children who entered the primary school received regular classroom instruction in reading for one month by their regular classroom teachers. To assess the children's response to the regular classroom instructions, the CBM reading fluency tests were administered twice and at the end of Tier 1, 12 children who met the criteria for the at-risk children were selected for the next Tier 2 intervention program. These 12 children received intensive reading instructions for 40minute-32 sessions, 4 times a week. To assess their responsiveness to the intervention, the CBM reading fluency tests were administered 8 times periodically during the period of intervention.
The achievement level and progress speed of the children were calculated on the basis of the CBM test, and from the testing result, the 3 children who did not respond to the intervention and concurrently did not satisfy exclusion criteria were finally selected as children with reading disabilities. To confirm whether these 3 children have reading disabilities, the K-WISC-III were additionally administered. The CBM data such as the mean, percentile, and standard deviations of these 3 children were calculated and compared to those of the children who responded in the Tier 2 in the areas of reading, phonological awareness, word recognition, naming speed, and comprehension to find out the characteristics of non-responders in these areas.
The following two major conclusions were presented from the characteristics of the 3 non-responders to the Tier 2 intervention:
1. Children with reading disabilities identified by the school-based response-to-intervention approach showed very low in areas of both achievement level and reading progress speed. Their achievement level belonged to the lower 5% and their reading progress speed profile during the Tier 2 intervention period maintained 0.56 level.
2. Children with reading disabilities showed significant deficiencies in reading performance in sub-areas such as phonological awareness, word recognition, comprehension, and word naming, as comparing to those children who were slow in learning. Particularly, ability in phonological awareness and performance in the non-words recognition task scores were presented the lowest among other sub-areas assessed.
Following recommendations were made from the present study:
1. To implement school-based RTI for identifying children with and without reading disabilities in the school, the development of specific intervention program for each tiers is needed. The intervention program includes learning factors to solve reading problems relating with learning difficulty as well as supplying low achievement.
2. The assessment instrument to evaluate the children's responsiveness to the intervention program should be developed. Particularly, the assessment tools to verify the validity and accuracy for the selection criteria and classification are definitely needed and tools for assessing the children's different characteristics in the sub-areas of reading skills are also needed. In these instruments, the grounds for diagnosis and identification should be clearly indicated to guarantee the accuracy of school-based RTI as a vehicle for differentiating between with and wiithout reading disabilities.
3. To effectively implement the Tier 2 intervention, an appropriate place for intervention should be provided in the school and the selection of intervener who has specialty of the RTI should be secured. At the same time, appropriate teaching instruments and materials should be sufficiently provided. And, the school administrators should set up the selection criteria for the teachers responsible for the RTI program in the school and prepare extra funds for those teachers. And, to promote the teachers' expertise as an intervention teacher, in-service training program should be provided by the Ministry of Education of city or provincial level.
4. The cooperation between school and the community research institutes like Special Education Support Centers is necessary. To make a final decision of identifying Learning Disabilities, the professional assessment services such as IQ test and other evaluation tests to verify an exclusion criteria should be provided by the centers in which qualified personnel are available.