Achievement gaps for students with disabilities: Stable, widening, or narrowing on a state-wide reading comprehension test?

Abstract

Reading comprehension growth trajectories from 3rd to 7th grade were estimated for 99,919 students on a state reading comprehension assessment. We examined whether differences between students in general education (GE) and groups of students identified as exceptional learners were best characterized as stable, widening, or narrowing. The groups included students with disabilities (SWD) from 8 exceptionality groups and 2 groups of academically gifted students (AG). Initial reading comprehension achievement differed for all exceptionalities. Controlling for sociodemographic variables, small, but statistically significant differences in growth rate were observed, with SWD groups growing more rapidly and AG groups growing more slowly than GE students. Given that differences in growth for SWD were small relative to the magnitude of the initial achievement gaps, the observed pattern of growth was one of stable differences. There was evidence of some narrowing of the achievement gap for students identified with learning disabilities in reading. The findings were interpreted within the simple view of reading where increases in word recognition skills for SWD in the grade range examined may have accounted for their more rapid growth in reading comprehension relative to GE students. The findings suggest that similar expectations for rate of reading growth for GE students and SWD might be incorporated into growthbased accountability models, but they also suggest that reading comprehension growth sufficient to have an impact on SWD achievement gaps does not routinely occur in typical educational practice.

The Effects of One versus Two Years of Intensive Reading Intervention Implemented with Late Elementary Struggling Readers

“…This phenomenon is most likely due to changes in the reading task over time. In earlier grades, text complexity is limited; constrained word-level skills are highly predictive of reading comprehension (Schulte et al, 2016). In later grades, the broader constructs of language and background knowledge are increasingly predictive of reading comprehension (Ahmed et al, 2016; Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006).…”

Latent profile analysis of students’ reading development and the relation of cognitive variables to reading profiles

“…Problems with sentence-level reading were also apparent among German-reading students, especially those classed in Profiles 1 (poor readers) and 2 (below-average readers), and very little reading improvement was seen after the first grade. The same negative reading comprehension growth pattern was established in a study of students in third through seventh grades that was conducted by Schulte, Stevens, Elliott, Tindal, and Nese (2016), and again in a study of children aged 7 through 17 that was conducted by Wei, Blackorby, and Schiller (2011). Both studies concluded that the developmental reading comprehension course for students with disabilities can be defined as a deficit model, in which the initial differences in skill levels persist over time with no sign of lower-achieving groups catching up to higher-achieving groups.…”

Who Gets to Read What? Tracking, Instructional Practices, and Text Complexity for Middle School Struggling Readers

“…Many studies have examined reading growth over time, investigating why some students succeed and others fail in reading by the time they get to middle school. In particular, research has identified certain subgroups of students that tend to lag behind in reading: students from lower socioeconomic households (Luyten & Bruggencate, 2011;McCoach, O'Connell, Reis, & Levitt, 2006;Morgan, Farkas, & Hibel, 2008;Morgan, Farkas, & Wu, 2011), students who are speech and language impaired (Farkas, 2011), students with other learning disabilities (Schulte, Stevens, Elliott, Tindal, & Nese, 2016;Wei, Blackorby, & Schiller, 2011), and language-minority students with limited English proficiency (Kieffer, 2008(Kieffer, , 2011Nakamoto, Lindsey, & Manis, 2007). Other longitudinal research has focused less on child characteristics and more on the contributions of specific components of literacy to reading comprehension.…”