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The Effectiveness of Standardized versus Individualized Interventions in

ReadingMelissa Coolong-Chaffin, PhD, NCSP

Michael Axelrod, PhD, LP, NCSPKaitlin O’Shea, MSE

Kimberlee Maczko, MSEKarissa Danes, MSE

University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

Disclosures

• There are no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, associated with this presentation

• Our program is currently funded by UWEC

Acknowledgements

• Statistical analysis- Kelly O’Shea• Undergraduate student interventionists• School partners, staff, and students

Today’s Agenda• Intervention Selection within RtI• Academic Intervention Clinic at UWEC• Method• Great Leaps versus BEA

• Results• Discussion• Implications for practice

• Questions, comments

Problem Solving Within RtI

Tier 1CORE

Primary Prevention:

Schoolwide and classwideinstruction

Tier 2SUPPLEMENTAL

Secondary Prevention:

Intensified, validated intervention

Tier 3INTENSIVE

Tertiary Prevention:

Further intensified and individualized

Intervention

~80% of students

~15%

~5%

Assessment within a PS Model

• Focuses on answering questions such as• What skills should we teach?• How should we teach the skills?

• As opposed to• Does the student meet eligibility criteria?

• Brief Experimental Analysis allows us to answer the first two questions, however resource intensive

Questions remain

• How do we select interventions for at risk and high risk students?

• Is a packaged intervention sufficient, or do at risk students benefit from an individualized approach?

• Our study explored the following research question:• Do students who receive interventions

indicated by a BEA make greater gains in oral reading fluency than students who receive an standardized approach?

Academic Intervention Clinic at UWEC

• History• Objectives

1. Provide brief academic interventions to students2. Train undergraduate students to:

• Implement evidence-based interventions with fidelity

• Accurately collect outcome data

• Currently in 3 schools• Funded primary through the university’s

undergraduate differential tuition program

Participants• Second grade students from two schools in

small city in the upper Midwest• School One, 82% of students receive FRL• School Two, 46% of students receive FRL

• Referred to an afterschool reading program by their teachers due to ORF performance below benchmark

• BEA n= 15• GL n= 19

Procedures• Students randomly assigned to receive modified

Great Leaps or intervention identified through brief experimental analysis• Approximately equal numbers in each school

• Three grade level passages from Formative Assessment System for Children (FAST) were administered to establish baseline

• Great Leaps placement test or BEA• Intervention occurred in 25 minute sessions two

times per week for 7 weeks

Procedures

• Progress was monitored one time per week using grade level FAST passage (WRCM)

• After 7 weeks of intervention, three passages were administered as a follow up

Great Leaps• Standard Treatment Intervention• Daily practice of reading skills• Phonological awareness• Phonics• Oral Reading Fluency

• Includes modeling, multiple opportunities to practice, graphing and incentives for increased performance

(Mercer & Campbell, 1998)

Empirical Support for Great Leaps

• Effective for increasing oral reading fluency

• Mercer, Cambell, Miller, Mercer, & Lane (2000)

• Begeny, Schulte, & Johnson (2012)

Great Leaps in Our Study

• Adapted for the study• More repetitions of the activities• Filled a 25-minute time period two times per

week for seven weeks

• Three activities each session• Phonics • High Frequency Word Lists/Phrases• Stories

Great Leaps Procedure• Student reads probe (phonics, high-frequency words

or stories) for one-minute. • Standard Error Correction Procedure• Correct errors as they are made• Review errors at the end of 1-min reading

• Interventionist computes WRCM and tells student the score• Mark it on the graph.

• Repeat process 3 times each session for each activity

• Student can earn prize.

Brief Experimental Analysis (BEA)

• Allows us to “test drive” interventions in order to find one that fits best for an individual student

• Compare multiple interventions to one another

• Helps us identify promising interventions to implement over time

General BEA Procedure

• Student reads alone to establish baseline• E.g., CBM-R probe, early reading probe

• Implement intervention using that probe• Administer probe again after the intervention• Look at increase over baseline• Replication• Extended Analysis

Empirical Support for BEA

• Using BEA to select interventions is an effective approach to identifying successful interventions.

• Meta-analysis of oral reading fluency - Burns & Wagner (2008)

• Early Literacy Skills - Pettursdottir et al. (2009)

• Math - Mong & Mong (2012)

• Writing – Parker et al. (2012)

WSPA Fall 2013

BEA in Our Study

• “Test drive” three different interventions• Repeated Reading (RR)• Listening Passage Preview (LPP)• Incentive

• Attempt to replicate intervention effects by comparing top two

• Implement “winner” for 7 weeks

Repeated Reading with Error Correction

• Allows us to see if student needs more practice

• Student reads alone to establish baseline• Student practices reading probe 3 times• Errors are corrected after each reading• Student reads alone for one minute while

interventionist records WRCM and errors

Listening Passage Preview

• Allows us to see if the student needs more modeling at the passage level

• Student reads passage to establish baseline• Interventionist reads passage to provide a

model of fluent reading (proper pacing and expression)

• Student reads alone for one minute while interventionist records WRCM and errors

Incentive

• Allows us to see if student isn’t motivated• Student reads passage to establish baseline• Student is told she will earn a prize if she

“beats her score” (usually 20% increase)• Student reads alone for one minute while

interventionist records WRCM and errors• Count words read correct and errors, give

prize if earned

1 2 3 4 5 6 70

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Nadine

BaselineRR+ECLPPIncentive

Sessions

Corr

ect

Wor

ds p

er M

inut

e

BEA Intervention

1 2 3 4 5 6 70

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Ava

BaselineRR+ECLPPIncentive

Sessions

Corr

ect

Wor

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BEA Intervention

Quality Indicators

• Interobserver agreement- above 95%• Treatment fidelity- above 95%

Results• Descriptive Information• Both groups’ scores generally increased over time.• The BEA group had higher mean scores at every time point.

• Independent Samples T-Test • Statistically significant difference in overall WRCM growth

between groups.• BEA group had a higher overall WRCM growth than the GL

group. • BEA Mean = 16.80 WRCM Growth• GL Mean = 4.26 WRCM Growth

• Large effect size - Cohen’s d=.83.

WRCM Scores Over Time

Baseline Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Time 4 Time 5 Time 6 Time 7 Follow-Up40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

BEAGL

Wor

ds R

ead

Corr

ectly

per

Min

ute

(WRC

M)

Limitations

• Small sample size• Between groups design• All of BEA interventions focused on passage

reading fluency• Great Leaps intervention include fluency

practice for words, phrases, passages

• More research is needed

Implications

• BEA-indicated interventions may be more effective than a modified version of the Great Leaps intervention

• Ongoing progress monitoring is always best practice

Implications

• Training• Time intensive• May take 45-90 minutes to complete BEA• Makes this appropriate for Tier 3

• Importance of demonstrating experimental control in applied settings• How many demonstrations of experimental

effects are needed?

Questions? Comments?

Contact Information

• Human Development Center Website: http://www.uwec.edu/HDC/resources.htm

• Dr. Coolong-Chaffin• chaffimc@uwec.edu• 715-836-3925

• Dr. Axelrod• axelromi@uwec.edu• 715-836-5020

ReferencesBegeny, J.C., Schulte, A.C., Johnson, K. (2012). Enhancing instructional problem solving: An efficient system for assisting struggling learners. New York: The Guilford Press. Burns, M.K. & Wagner, D. (2008). Determining an effective intervention within a brief experimental analysis for reading: A meta-analytic review. School Psychology Review, 37(1), 126-136.Christ, T. J., Ardoin, S., Monaghen, B., Van Norman, E. & White, M. J. (2013). CBMReading: Technical Manual. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Department of Educational Psychology. Mercer, C. D. & Campbell, K.U. (1998). Great Leaps Reading Kindergarten- Grade 2. Gainsville, FL: Diarmuid.Mercer, C.D., Campbell, K.U., Miller, W.D., Mercer, K.D., & Lane, H.B. (2000). Effects of a reading fluency intervention for middle schoolers with specific learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 15(4), 179-189.