title: The Effects of a Comprehensive Reading Program on Reading Outcomes for Middle School Students With Disabilities.
abstract: Reading achievement scores for adolescents with disabilities are markedly lower than the scores of adolescents without disabilities. For example, 62% of students with disabilities read below the basic level on the NAEP Reading assessment, compared to 19% of their nondisabled peers. This achievement gap has been a continuing challenge for more than 35 years. In this article, we report on the promise of a comprehensive 2-year reading program called Fusion Reading. Fusion Reading is designed to significantly narrow the reading achievement gap of middle school students with reading disabilities. Using a quasi-experimental design with matched groups of middle school students with reading disabilities, statistically significant differences were found between the experimental and comparison conditions on multiple measures of reading achievement with scores favoring the experimental condition. The effect size of the differences were Hedges's g = 1.66 to g = 1.04 on standardized measures of reading achievement.
authors.affiliation: 1 Center for Research on Learning, University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA.
authors.forename: Michael F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Hock
authors.affiliation: 1 Center for Research on Learning, University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA.
authors.forename: Irma F
authors.initials: IF
authors.lastname: Brasseur-Hock
authors.affiliation: 2 University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA.
authors.forename: Alyson J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Hock
authors.affiliation: 3 Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School, Dubuque Community School District, IA, USA.
authors.forename: Brenda
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Duvel
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D004519:Education, Special / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012574:Schools; D013334:Students
keywords: adolescent reading; reading disabilities; reading interventions