PREDICTING READING ACHIEVEMENT.   Term Paper ID:30428 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Discusses factors that affect reading outcomes for young children, especially those at risk for academic failure.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Discusses factors that affect reading outcomes for young children, especially those at risk for academic failure. Cites three scholarly research studies that discuss early childhood develoopment programs. Issues of socioeconomic status, learning disabilities, behavioral conditions, instructional deficits. Need to develop interventions to enhance long-term rewading outcomes. Importance of assessment procedures. Paper Introduction: Predicting Reading Achievement One of the most significant areas of concern in American public education centers upon reading achievement among young students who are regarded as being at-risk for academic failure and/or unacceptably low levels of achievement because of a variety of factors such as low socioeconomic status (SES), behavioral conditions, learning disabilities, and instructional deficits. To examine this question and to determine trends in the empirical literature related to these effects, three separate research studies were selected from the literature. Each of the studies targets early childhood development programs such as Head Start and posits a relationship between attentional problems/hyperactivity and reading achievement at both the prereading and first through fifth grade levels. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Velting and Whitehurst (1997) structured a model based upon therelationship between preschool attention-behavior and school readingachievement based on the hypothesis that preschool attention-behaviorproblems are associated with deficits in the acquisition of certainpreschool skills that are related to later reading achievement. D., Von Secker, C., & Alban, T. Results failed to show a significant path betweeninattention/hyperactivity and prereading skills at the Head Start andkindergarten levels. Velting, O. (2 ). D. T., Schafer, W. However, a significant path was found between firstgrade inattention/hyperactivity and reading skills. Both behavioral assessment andprereading as well as reading skills assessments were undertaken using theConners Teacher Rating Scale, the Developing Skills Checklist, the WideRange Achievement Test-Revised, the Stanford Achievement Tests, and theWoodcock Reading Mastery Tests. Rabiner and Coie (2 ) concluded that attention problems play a veryimportant role in the development of reading difficulties and that manyinattentive children who fail to develop critical reading skills duringfirst grade have difficulty catching up to peers in later years. References Guthrie, J. Predicting Reading Achievement One of the most significant areas of concern in American publiceducation centers upon reading achievement among young students who areregarded as being at-risk for academic failure and/or unacceptably lowlevels of achievement because of a variety of factors such as lowsocioeconomic status (SES), behavioral conditions, learning disabilities,and instructional deficits. Screeningof children for risk status, inattention, and reading deficits is thereforecritical in order to develop effective interventions, which can enhancelong-term reading outcomes. Journal ofthe American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 39(7), 859-875. J. Rabiner and Coie (2 ) sought to clarify the relationship betweeninattention/hyperactivity and reading achievement and to determine whetherthe former is predictive of reading difficulties while examining whetherscreening for attention problems could be of practical value in identifyingchildren at risk for reading under-achievement. (1997). By examining the relationships between such variables,researchers and educators alike stand to benefit from improvedunderstanding of how and why certain students do poorly in reading andothers do well in reading. The authors noted that childrenwith externalizing behavior problems have been shown in numerous studies tobe at risk for a wide range of social, emotional, and cognitivedifficulties, with attention deficits and hyperactivity most criticallyseen as impacting upon academic achievement. Early attention problems andchildren's reading achievement: A longitudinal investigation. They foundthat IQ and attention ratings consistently showed the strongest associationwith reading achievement. (2 ).Contributions of instructional practices to reading achievement: Astatewide improvement program. Three studies will be discussed, which were conducted by Rabiner andCoie (2 ), Guthrie, Schafer, Von Secker, and Alban (2 ), and Veltingand Whitehurst (1997). The final article selected for discussion herein was by Guthrie, etal (2 ). Using a sample of all 4-year-olds with consenting parents in fourHead Start centers in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, a finalpopulation of 1 5 children available for testing at all three time pointswas achieved (Velting & Whitehurst, 1997). They hypothesized that prereading skills link these two variables andexplored the link via a longitudinal study employing a sample of 1 5 low-SES children's inattentive/hyperactive behavior and prereading skills inHead Start, kindergarten, and first grade. Velting and Whitehurst (1997) examined how preschoolinattention/hyperactivity relates to elementary school reading achievement. The Journal of Educational Research,93(4), 211-225. Rabiner and Coie (2 ) conducted path analysis after determiningcorrelations of all other measures with reading achievement. Results indicated that IQ and prior reading achievement as wellas other behavioral difficulties were significantly correlated with andpredictive of reading achievement. Inattention-hyperactivity and reading achievement in children from low-income families: A longitudinal model. N., & Whitehurst, G. Taken together, these three studies support the view that a number offactors directly affect reading outcomes for young children. To examine this question and to determinetrends in the empirical literature related to these effects, three separateresearch studies were selected from the literature. Teachers were given performance assessments by 36 trained teams whofocused on measures of instruction such as basal emphasis, books andresources, comprehension instruction, integrated reading, writing, andcontent, collaboration, and writing. The authors concluded: 1) there is a strong relationship between this behavioral problem and poorreading achievement in children from low SES families; 2) there is a strongrelationship between prereading skills and reading skills and amonghyperactivity levels at all three grades. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 25(4), 321-332. Theyfurther hypothesized that low SES or chronic poverty is an interveningvariables impacting upon this relationship in a negative direction. It focused on contributions of instructional practices toreading achievement and hypothesized that improving schools in whichstatewide performance assessments demonstrated increased achievement wouldbe staffed by teachers exhibiting specific instructional characteristics.Further, it was hypothesized that an instructional characteristic such ascomprehension strategy instruction might be occurring in a school readingprogram because teachers perceive student needs for such strategies. These studies emphasize the critical importance of early childhoodintervention when risk factors are determined to be present. Finally, they demonstrate that the empiricalexamination of the correlates and associations between variables impactingupon student outcomes is proceeding. The researchers, noting that effect sizes were present, furtherexamined achievement domains via chi square analyses. Guthrie, et al (2 ) asked all Maryland school districts toparticipate in the study and gathered a sample of 545 teachers from middle-income, suburban, elementary schools. The teachers were evenly distributedthrough grades one through five, predominantly female, mostly Caucasian,and with varying levels of teaching experience. Theyunderscore the importance of school-specific and student-specificassessment procedures. Each of the studiestargets early childhood development programs such as Head Start and positsa relationship between attentional problems/hyperactivity and readingachievement at both the prereading and first through fifth grade levels. As significantly,instructional capacity or competency appear to be directly related to theseoutcomes as well. Inattentive first graders with normalreading scores after kindergarten were found to be at-risk for poor readingoutcomes. Path analysis with multiple regressionprocedures emphasizing prediction of reading achievement was alsoconducted. To that end, the authorsmonitored 387 children from kindergarten through grade five, usingstandardized assessments of attention problems and reading achievement,including the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised, thePassage Comprehension Subtest, the Child Attention Problems Scale, andmeasures of other variables such as IQ, hyperactivity, parental involvementin education, and the ADHD Rating Scale. According to Guthrie, et al (2 ), a high level of correlationbetween instructional variables and student outcomes were found to be atwork. The test was examined for grades three and five with respectto reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies, and languageuse. In brief, theyconcluded that reading achievement change as measured by the statewideperformance assessment in Maryland was directly associated with thecharacteristics of the school reading program in higher elementary grades. Rabiner, D., & Coie, J. Eachaddresses some aspect of the relationship between attentional matters,instruction, and reading achievement at the preschool level along withpredictions of long-term reading skill mastery. Though different with respect to both methodologyand primary research questions, the three studies are complementary. Attentionalproblems or risk status due to socioeconomic condition are clearlyimportant influences over student outcomes. To measure achievement inthe target schools, the MSPAP or Maryland Performance Assessment Protocolwas employed. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.