I’m looking for benchmarks from other schools RE: students reading progress for students w/ language based LD and avg. or above cognitive potential. How are your students doing in word ID, fluency and silent reading comprehension and what assessment are you using? Thank you for your response in advance.
Re: reading progress
Scott: ERIC has a page that talks about assessment tools. WJ is nationally normed and what our school uses. You might check out www.Reidmartin.com w.r.t. what are “appropriate” goals and how much progress one should expect, etc, etc. Anyway- what other schools do is no doubt interesting, but what need to be know is what the LAW says.You know- the resource teachers must feel beleagured (sp?) by all of this- and not doubt, by and large, they’re a well intentioned group going 100miles/hour trying, well to hel kids maybe just no with meaningful programs- no fault of their own- however these school administrators get pretty tidy paychecks- ok to hold those folks to task.
cheers
Re: reading progress
Check out the International Dyslexia Society. They may have some specific info. I just attended a workshop by Dr. Eileen Marzola and she talked about comprehension skills for literature and content areas and how they differ for students with LD as well as other benchmarks. The other biggy is Fluency!
Fern
First of all, I think we may compare apples and oranges and never know it. However, I’ll venture out and share. I have a few with IQ scores over 100 (most are 80s and 90s). If these students are truly LD (not primarily ADHD which may result in an “LD” when the child is totally inattentive and does nothing for years in school), I usually find that comprehension skills are decent. If the child can think, then usually the child can think about what he or she read, esp. when he or she can go back and reread sections.
I usually find the classic LD student has word reading and fluency issues. So, while I work on word reading skills, the child may remain 1-2 years below grade level on the WJ III word identification subtest. My students notoriously will learn these words and read them from books and off the overhead, yet mess up for the test.
Fluency/speed is usually an issue and remains an issue with 6th graders achieving speeds of 80-90 wpm in the best cases. My 6th graders typically can pass informal reading inventories re. accuracy and comprehension at 5th and sometimes 6th grade levels.
I do get “LD” students who are not LD at all, but ADHD and they learn to read handily once I get their attention on their work.