Effectiveness of Paraeducator-Supplemented Individual Instruction: Beyond Basic Decoding Skills

• Published in: Journal of learning disabilities 2007-11, Vol.40 (6), p.508-525
• Main Authors: Vadasy, Patricia F., Sanders, Elizabeth A., Tudor, Sarah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Age Differences; Biological and medical sciences; Black students; Child; Child clinical studies; Deafness; Decoding; Decoding (Reading); Developmental disorders; Early Reading; Education, Special; Elementary education; Fluency; Grade 1; Grade 2; Grade 3; Grade 4; Humans; Individual Instruction; Intervention; Language; Language skills; Learning; Learning disabilities; Learning disorders; Learning Processes; Lexical access; Medical sciences; Paraprofessional School Personnel; Phonics; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reading; Reading accuracy; Reading Difficulties; Reading disabilities; Reading Fluency; Reading Instruction; Reading Skills; School psychologists; Special education; Special education. Orthophony; Speech Perception; Spelling; Standard scores; Supplementary Education; Teaching - standards; Teaching assistants; Teaching Methods; Treatments; Word recognition
• ISSN: 0022-2194; 1538-4780
• DOI: 10.1177/00222194070400060301

A total of 46 children in Grades 2 and 3 with low word-level skills were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups that received supplemental phonics-based reading instruction. One group received intervention October through March (21.5 hours), and one group served as a control from October through March and later received intervention March through May (17.5 hours). Paraeducators trained in a standard treatment protocol provided individual instruction for 30 min per day, 4 days per week. At the March posttest, the early treatment (ET; n = 23) group outperformed the controls (late treatment, LT; n = 20) on reading accuracy and passage fluency. Across both groups, second graders outperformed third graders on these same measures. At the 3-month follow-up, the ET group showed no evidence of decline in reading accuracy, passage fluency, or words spelled; however, 3rd-grade ET students had significantly higher spelling skills compared to 2nd graders. The LT group demonstrated significant growth during their intervention in reading accuracy and spelling, but not passage fluency. When we compared the ET and LT groups on their gains per instructional hour, we found that the ET group made significantly greater gains than the LT group across all 3 measures. The results support the value of paraeducator-supplemented reading instruction for students below grade level in word identification and reading fluency.