Reading Strategy Interventions: Can Literacy Outcomes be Enhanced for at-Risk Adolescents?

Many students are entering secondary school reading at levels that are significantly below grade level. In some secondary schools, these students constitute the large majority of the population. A cross-sectional study that involved hundreds of junior and senior high students was conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning (KUCRL) and revealed an interesting phenomenon related to these students (Warner, Schumaker, Alley, & Deshler, 1980). As shown in Figure 1, the reading achievement of at-risk students and students with high-incidence disabilities, like learning disabilities, plateaus after the seventh grade. The straight, solid line in this figure represents the path of “normal” acquisition of reading skills by average-achieving students. That is, at the conclusion of 1 year of instruction, on average, students should have acquired “1-year’s worth” of knowledge and skills as represented by Point A on that line. At the end of the second year, they should be performing at the level of Point B, and so on. Students who acquire skills and knowledge at this pace are, in turn, able to successfully deal with the curriculum demands that are presented to them. In other words, they can successfully “access the curriculum” and succeed in their courses. On the other hand, the reading performance of students with disabilities and at-risk students (students who are failing at least one required course each semester) usually does not follow this line of progress. On average, these students perform at the level of Point A1 at the end of 1 year of schooling, and their achievement travels a path similar to the one depicted by the two dotted curved lines, with at-risk students earning slightly higher reading achievement scores than the students with disabilities. The area between the solid line (representing normal achievement) and the dotted lines (representing underachievement) depicts the “performance gap” for each group of students. This represents the gap between what students are expected to achieve and perform in their classes and what they can actually do. Over time, this gap grows larger and larger, and it is especially exacerbated in the later grades when the academic growth of students with disabilities plateaus. As a result of this performance gap, these students are unable to “access the general education curriculum” and meet the demands of required courses for graduation from high school. Their resulting failure leads to discouragement and disengagement from school, and, for too many, this disengagement manifests itself in dropping out of school altogether. The challenge, then, is to intervene with these students in a significant way so that they can read at their grade level (e.g., if they are in the ninth grade, they read at the ninth-grade level), learn critical information in their required courses, earn passing grades in these courses, graduate, and participate successfully in postsecondary education or employment opportunities. Reading Strategy Interventions: Can Literacy Outcomes Be Enhanced for At-Risk Adolescents?