1. The Future of Special Education for Students with Academic Difficulties
Council for Exceptional Children
Conference – 2018
Sharon Vaughn, PhD
Rebecca Zumeta Edmonds, PhD
This document was produced under U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Award No. H326Q Celia Rosenquist serves as the project officer. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service or enterprise mentioned in this document is intended or should be inferred.

2. Presenters
Presenters Sharon Vaughn, PhD University of Texas at Austin Executive Director, The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk Rebecca Zumeta Edmonds, PhD American Institute of Research (AIR) Co-Director, National Center on Intensive Intervention

3. Connect to MCPER
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At meadowscenter.org you can also find resources, lesson plans, information on institutes, partnerships, projects, and the “10 Key Series.”

4. Connect to NCII
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YouTube Channel: National Center on Intensive Intervention
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At you can also find resources, tools, and implementation and instructional supports

5. Advancing the Field
Improving future practice requires reflection on current practice
What types of services and practices are you providing for students with academic challenges?
Are these services closing the gap? Are they preparing students for a successful “next step”?
When services and practices are “successful,” what adjustments are still needed?
When services and practices are not leading to adequate progress, what changes are needed?

6. Intensifying Interventions to Meet Student Needs
Are academic interventions and services sufficiently intense to meet students’ needs?
Are students with disabilities excluded from the RTI/MTSS systems of intervention?
If yes, then why?
What services and interventions do students with disabilities receive?
Are they sufficiently intense to meet student needs?

7. Effects from a Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Researcher and School Implemented Treatments with Fourth Graders with Significant Reading Difficulties

8. Aim and Two-year Research Overview
Aim: Determine the efficacy of a multi-component reading intervention for upper elementary students with reading difficulties: Comparison of 2 years, 1 year, and school provided treatments
4th graders not eligible
(Gates > 85)
4th grade (Gates < 85)
Year 1- 4th Grade
Treatment 1 and 2
Screen all 4th grade students
Year 2 - 5th Grade
Treatment 2
Years 1 & 2
BAU Condition
Random Assignment

9. Pretest Scores (Fall 4th Grade)
Measure
Construct
Group N
Mean SD
WJ-III Letter Word ID
Decoding
Treatment
296
89.16
11.25
BAU
149
90.40
11.01
TOWRE-SWE
Fluency
295
79.88
12.19
150
80.95
12.07
WJ-III PC RC
81.37
8.89
82.77
8.87
Gates McGinitie RT
323
77.25
6.09
161
77.14
6.17
-Comp scores range from (i.e., 6th to 12th percentile). Low compared to Tier 2 interventions typically begin around the 25th percentile or 90
-59% of students were below the 30th Percentile on TOWRE

10. Years 1-2 of Intervention
Academic Vocabulary
Content Focused
Review every 10th day
CBM
High-utility vocabulary
Fluency Readings
3 days per unit beginning at unit 2
Stretch Text
Social studies content 4 days per unit
Science content aligned with school’s scope and sequence
Self-Regulation
Does it Make Sense?
Vocabulary goal setting
Word Study
Daily
Pattern and sight words
Phrase and sentence reading
Integrated academic vocabulary
Word Study: students to read with speed and accuracy with teachers who give immediate error correction. This is not a typical decoding programs where students are taught sounds explicitly in isolation. We want students to read whole words as this is what they will encounter when they read text.
Vocabulary: Teach and reteach words used in text: High Utility words, pictures, activities
Fluency with Text: Shorter passages, multiple reads, comp questions
SELF REGULATION as a mechanism for improving ATTENTION
White denotes Year 1 or Year 1 and 2; Green denotes Year 2 only

11. Does It Make Sense? (Years 1-2)
Self-monitoring of text
Identifying context clues to support answers
Do sentences make sense?
Answering sentences that are not true or false test questions. Discussing reasoning with students.
Want students to be active participants in their learning.

12. Self Regulation (Year 2 only)
Attention is a high priority focus
Teach and provide opportunities for students to:
Set goals
Evaluate their progress towards meeting their goals
Reflect on their goals
GOAL: Improve vocabulary knowledge
Integrated self-regulation into the lessons to draw their attention to text through goal setting, monitoring, and self-evaluation
SR embedded into the text, as compared to stand alone SR training
Prior to lesson students circled if they felt they could do their three objectives

13. Reading Comprehension with SR
Slight variations from Year 3 to Year 4, but framework is the same

14. Decoding & Fluency Results: Longitudinal Data from Years 1-2

15. Reading Comprehension Results: Longitudinal Data from Years 1-2

16. Conclusions
Regardless of researcher or school provided treatment, students made some progress in closing the gap
Gains compared to previous extensive interventions of Grade students (Wanzek et al., 2013)
It may be necessary to provide even more intensive interventions (longer duration, smaller groups, focused instruction) for some students to remediate reading difficulties
More extensive intervention studies are needed for students in upper elementary

17. Summer Loss
Note: SS TOSREC Data; ELL reading intervention HS.

18. Another Approach to Intensive Intervention: Data-Based Individualization (DBI)

19. What do we do for students who do not respond, even to well-designed, evidence-based interventions?
More Help
Validated programs are not universally effective programs—Five to ten percent of students need something more.
(Fuchs et al., 2008; NCII, 2013).

20. More Practice, More Individualization
How do we help?
More Practice, More Individualization
Students with intensive needs often require 10–30 times more practice than peers to learn new information.
(Gersten et al., 2008)

21. NCII’s Approach to Intensive Intervention: Data-Based Individualization (DBI)
Systematic method for using data to determine when and how to provide more intensive intervention:
Origins in data-based program modification/experimental teaching developed at the University of Minnesota
Four decades of experimental research
Ongoing process comprising intervention and assessment adjusted over time—Not a single program or strategy
(Deno & Mirkin, 1977) and expanded upon by others (Capizzi & Fuchs, 2005; Fuchs, Deno, & Mirkin, 1984; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Hamlett, 1989)

22. Assumptions
Students with disabilities who require special education need specially designed instruction to progress toward standards
A data-driven, systematized approach can help educators develop programs likely to yield success for students with intensive needs (including those with and without disabilities)
Students with disabilities need specially designed instruction to show progress. Now, if you are teaching a student who has an individualized education program and that plan is working for the student, you are not expected to stop doing what is working and begin DBI. The purpose is not to fix what is not broken. Often, however, students with disabilities have plans that are not working and as a result they do not progress. Those are the students for which DBI could be beneficial because systematic, data-driven approaches can help educators develop programs that are likely to yield success for students with intensive needs.

23. DBI Animated slide. Click at underlined text. ANIMATION REMOVED
NCII uses this graphic to illustrate the progression of DBI. We begin with a secondary intervention program, delivered with greater intensity, and progress monitor to determine the student’s response. If the student is responsive, we can continue the current intervention or consider reducing intensity as goals are met (depending on rate and duration of response and nature of skill deficits). If the student is not sufficiently responsive, we gather additional information through informal diagnostic assessment, which identifies student needs to guide intervention adaptations. We continue progress monitoring to make decisions about whether or not the student is responding to the adapted intervention.

24. DBI: 5 Step Individualization Process
Validated Intervention (or Tier 2 Intervention)
Progress Monitoring
Diagnostic Data
Intervention Adaptation
Progress Monitor
Throughout the DBI process, we use progress monitoring data to evaluate a student’s response to intervention, moving to the next component as needed:
Secondary intervention program, delivered with greater intensity. We usually begin by intensifying the secondary intervention already being used.
Progress monitoring data are used to evaluate the student’s response to the intensified intervention. If the student is still not showing enough progress, we collect and review additional data to determine specific skill deficits.
Informal diagnostic assessment data are used to identify skill deficits, which tell us how the intervention needs to be changed.
Adaptation. Based on data, we may choose to adapt the current intervention or try a new intervention.
Continued progress monitoring, with adaptations occurring whenever needed to ensure adequate progress.

25. Academic Intervention Progression in Practice
Animated slide. Click at underlined text to bring up next arrow.
In this academic illustration, we will walk you through the DBI process for a student having reading difficulties. As in the previous DBI graphic, we begin with a secondary intervention delivered with fidelity. Progress monitoring data identify students who are not responding. Diagnostic assessment helps us determine the student’s needs, and these needs guide our adaptation to the intervention. We continue progress monitoring to determine if the student is responding to the adaptation. If not, we will make more data-based changes.

26. Learn More at our Strand! Feb. 9 from 1:30-5:00 (TCC Room 24)
How to Reach Hard to Reach Students Using Intensive Intervention: An In-Depth Look at How Team Building, Data Analysis, and Intensification Processes Can Impact Student Outcomes
Session 1: Towards More Effective Systems: Implementing Intensive Intervention in a Tiered System of Support
Session 2: Taxonomy of Intervention Intensity: A Process for Evaluating and Building Intervention Intensity
Session 3: Tier 3 Intensive Intervention: Making Data Analysis Easy!

27. Encouraging Implementation
What is feasible for teachers to implement and also highly effective for students?
What are the barriers that we must overcome to implement more effective interventions?
How might researchers, implementers, and policymakers work together to ensure that students with disabilities have access to feasible and effective intervention services?

28. Thank you!
Questions or Comments?

29. Disclaimer
This presentation was produced under the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Award No. H326Q Celia Rosenquist serves as the project officer. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service, or enterprise mentioned in this webinar is intended or should be inferred. 29