Performance of Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities on Early-Grade Curriculum-Based Measures of Word and Passage Reading Fluency

Abstract

Alternate assessments have been used for the last 10 years to evaluate schools' efforts to teach children with significant cognitive disabilities. However, few studies have examined the reading skills of children who participate in these assessments. The purpose of this study was to extend understanding of the reading skills of this population by administering early-grade word and passage reading fluency curriculum-based measures to a sample of 7,440 students in Grades 3 through 8 and 11. Overall, the performance on curriculum-based measures and the relationship with alternate assessment performance varied based upon disability, grade, and level of alternate assessment. The authors discuss implications for test developers and teachers along with future directions for research.

Sentence Reading Comprehension by Means of Training in Segment-Unit Reading for Japanese Children with Intellectual Disabilities

“…Despite their achievements in word reading and comprehension (Jones et al, 2006;Lemons et al, 2013), most individuals with ID struggle to read and comprehend sentences (Fajardo, Ávila, Ferrer, Tavares, Gómez, & Hernández, 2014). Recently, van Wingerden et al (2016) evaluated the development of sentence reading comprehension skills in typically developing (TD) children and children with ID.…”

“…Thus, it may be inappropriate for children with ID to receive repeated reading training with whole sentence units. Because these children are better at reading and segmenting words (Allor et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2006;Lemons et al, 2013;Ratz & Lenhard, 2013) than at reading sentences (Fajardo et al, 2014), a more successful strategy for their repeated reading training may be to present each word or segment in the sentence sequentially, one at a time.…”

“…However, both participants immediately improved after SUR training, which presented one segment at a time in a sequence. They rarely made errors during the training phase because they already had a repertoire of words they could read accurately (Ratz & Lenhard, 2013), and their reading levels were equivalent to that of first graders (Jones et al, 2006;Lemons et al, 2013). If we had presented both the first and second segments together on a same slide, the training would have been a forward chaining procedure.…”

“…Children with intellectual disabilities (ID) often have difficulty in acquiring early literacy skills (e.g., Katims, 2001). Although the reading skills of this population vary from inability to read to word reading capability (e.g., Ratz & Lenhard, 2013), most individuals with ID are able to read and comprehend words as their age increases (Jones, Long, & Finlay, 2006;Lemons, Zigmond, Kloo, Hill, Mrachko, Paterra et al, 2013). Several skills have been shown to be strongly related to the development of word reading skills in children with ID: phonological awareness (Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Cheatham, & Champlin, 2010), letter-sound knowledge (Dessemontet & de Chambrier, 2015), picture naming (Soltani & Roslan, 2013), and temporal processing (van Wingerden, Segersa, van Balkom, & Verhoeven, 2016).…”

Improving Professional Development to Enhance Reading Outcomes for Students in Special Education

“…Similarly, in a large state‐wide evaluation involving over 7,000 students who participated in one state's alternate assessment based on alternate academic achievement standards, Lemons et al. () showed that by 11th grade, very few students were able to read at the fifth‐grade level (2.6% of students with ID; 6.0% of students with ASD).…”