Student Behavior Ratings and Response to Tier 1 Reading Intervention: Which Students Do Not Benefit?

Area of Science:

• Education
• Psychology
• Special Education

Background:

• Core reading instruction and interventions show varied effects based on student cognitive and skill levels.
• Limited evidence exists for affective characteristics, though students with problem behaviors often respond poorly to reading interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the range of student behavior ratings for which a core reading intervention is effective.
• To analyze the impact of student behavior on the effectiveness of the Individualized Student Instruction (ISI) Tier 1 reading intervention.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a dataset of 3,024 K-3 students from seven independent studies on the ISI intervention.
• Employed integrative data analysis to pool data and estimate Johnson-Neyman intervals for student behavior ratings.
• Examined treatment effects at both within-classroom and between-classroom levels.

Main Results:

• The ISI intervention effectively improved reading scores (b=0.51, p=.020, d=0.08).
• Students with very low or very high behavior ratings (-0.95 - 2.87) did not benefit.
• Students in classrooms with higher average problem behaviors (0.05 - 4.25) did not benefit from ISI.

Conclusions:

• Core reading interventions can be effective, but not universally for all students.
• Student behavior significantly moderates the effectiveness of reading interventions.
• Differentiating instruction alone is insufficient for improving reading ability in students with behavioral challenges.