At a glance
- Program: Read 180®
- Subjects: Intervention Curriculum, Literacy Curriculum
- Report Type: Efficacy Study
- Grade Level: Middle, High
- Region: Southeast
- Population: Students with Disabilities, Students with Specific Learning Disabilities
- District Urbanicity: Suburban, Rural
- District Size: Large
- Implementation Model: 80+ Minutes
READ 180 students in general education and students with disabilities exceeded expected yearly growth benchmarks on FCAT Reading.
During the 2009–2010 school year, the School District of Osceola County (SDOC) implemented READ 180 with middle and high school students who tested in Level 1 or Level 2 on the prior year’s Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT®) Reading Test. Approximately 59% of these students were Hispanic, 19% were White, 12% were African American, 7% were multiracial, and 2% represented other ethnicities. Nearly 75% were economically disadvantaged and received free or reduced-price lunch through the National School Lunch Program, 16% of students were English learners (EL), and 19% were students with disabilities.
FCAT Reading Test data were examined for 1,333 sixth through tenth-grade students who had spring 2009 and spring 2010 scores. Dependent t-tests revealed that each grade level made significant Developmental Scale Score (DSS) gains on the FCAT Reading Test from 2009 to 2010 (Table 1). Students in the seventh and eighth grades made the largest improvements, demonstrating gains of 208 and 166 DSS points, respectively. Data also indicated that READ 180 students exhibited much greater DSS growth from 2009 to 2010 than did their peers in the state and district (Graph 1). For example, the seventh-grade READ 180 DSS change was 94 points higher than that observed statewide and 71 points higher than that observed district-wide. It is important to note that tenth-grade students across the state performed well below the 77-point DSS growth benchmark. In general, the tenth-grade FCAT Reading Test is more rigorous than for the other grade levels. Notably, tenth-grade READ 180 students outperformed their district and state peers.
GRAPH 1. School District of Osceola County READ 180 Students, Grades 6–10 (N=1,333)
Performance on FCAT Reading Test, 2009 to 2010
Findings revealed that, overall, more than half (55%) of all READ 180 students surpassed the DSS growth benchmark on the FCAT Reading Test. When the data were parsed by education classification, the percentage of students with disabilities who performed above the expected DSS growth benchmark was comparable (48%) to that of all READ 180 students with disabilities (55%). Further disaggregation of the data by disability type revealed that approximately 77% of these students have a specific learning disability, including dyslexia. As Graph 2 shows, students with a specific learning disability demonstrated higher rates of surpassing the growth benchmark (51%) than did students with a language impairment (25%) or an emotional and/or behavioral disorder (33%).
GRAPH 2. School District of Osceola County READ 180 Students with Disabilities, Grades 6–10 (N=250)
Percentage of Students Surpassing FCAT Reading DSS Growth Benchmarks by Disability, 2010
Note. Of the 250 students with disabilities,192 were classified as having a specific learning disability, 14 were classified as having language impairment, and 15 were classified as having an emotional/behavioral disorder. The remaining students were classified as having a speech impairment, a hearing impairment, an orthopedic impairment, a health impairment, or intellectual disability, or autism. Only groups with 15 or more students were evaluated separately for the analysis.