Holly Lane of the University of Florida provided participants at the Division for Learning Disabilities conference with explicit and systematic instructional practices that they can use to enhance children’s vocabularies. Speaking at the conference held in Charleston (SC; US), Holly explained that many children’s reading comprehension is constrained by, among othes, two factors: fluency and vocabulary. Of these two, research shows that the effects of fluency eventually top out; once one becomes a fluent reader, then the gains from increasing fluency are limited (a ceiling effect). However, gains in comprehension from increases in vocabulary can continue, because one’s vocabulary can continue to grow. In this picture, Holly is responding to a question from a participant. We hope to have more about Holly’s presentation available via TeachingLD.org
Monthly Archive for November, 2005
At the Division for Learning Disabilities conference in Charleston (SC; US), Paul Morgan of Pennsylvania State University provided a workshop about Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) for arithmetic instruction for young children. In his presentation he gave particiapting teachers an overview of the research supporting the use of PALS (there is a lot of empirical evidence demonstrating PALS’s beneficial effects on children’s performance) as well explicit training about how to implement Math PALS activities (they got to practice the activities and receive feedback).
The picture shows Paul responding to a question. People interested in obtaining PALS materials may order them from the PALS Website at Vanderbilt University. I hope to have an brief version of Paul’s presentation available at TeachingLD.org
Sphere: Related ContentFewer students with disabilities are taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) than reported earlier this year. In July of 2005, the US Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported that 5% of students with disabilities were not included in the NAEP for 2003, but 28 October 2005 Marnie S. Shaul (Director of the GAO section on Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues) wrote to Senator Edward Kennedy to say that 40% of students with disabilities did not take the 2002 NAEP reading assessment sample.
Two months after the report’s issuance, Education provided us with new information regarding how the NAEP data concerning the exclusion of students with disabilities should be interpreted. In reviewing this information, we determined that the exclusion rate for students with disabilities was much higher than previously reported, with about 40 percent of the students with disabilities who were part of the 2002 NAEP reading assessment sample excluded from the actual testing. In addition, the percentages of students with disabilities who were excluded from the testing varied by grade.
Why did the percentages shift so substantially? The data appear to come from different years, but Ms. Shaul’s letter does not make clear the extent to which the different years of reporting account for the differences in participation rates. Nor does the letter elaborate on what “new information” Education Department people provided.
According to an article by Ben Feller, writing for the Associated Press, the discrepency is the result of a mistake in the original report. Feller reported that the orignal report apparently used the wrong denominators in computing percentages of students with disabilities participating.
The 5 percent figure the GAO originally used reflects the number of students with disabilities who were excluded from testing when compared with the entire sample of students.
Yet when the number of disabled children who were kept out of testing is compared only with the sample of students identified with disabilities, the exclusion rates are much higher.
Links to PDFs of the original report and Ms. Shaul’s letter to Senator Kennedy and a link to Mr. Feller’s story as it appeared in the Washington Post.
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