Responsiveness-to-Intervention

The goal of this study was to describe and measure the effects of continuous, as-needed intervention in reading for 92 children in Grades K-3 to determine whether the severity of reading disability (RD) could be significantly reduced in the catchment schools. Tier 1 consisted of professional development for teachers of reading that focused on findings from the National Reading Panel Report of the Subgroups (2000). Additional instruction was provided as early as kindergarten for children whose achievement fell below average. Tier 2 intervention consisted of small group reading instruction 3 times per week, and Tier 3 was daily instruction delivered individually or in groups of 2. Par-ticipating second and third grade teachers formed their own control, because their chil-dren were measured in the first and second years of the study, before their grade was in-cluded, and also in the following year, when their children were full participants in the treatment. A comparison of the reading achievement of third grade children showed sig-nificant differences favoring children in the treated years in decoding, word identifica