Project Activities
Students will be identified by their teachers and assessed for eligibility with a standardized reading assessment. The study will consist of two phases. Phase I will include 360 students with and without reading disabilities who will complete the Ohio Assessment Test (OAT) without accommodations and with pacing assistance. Pacing assistance consists of guiding the student's timing through the reading passage and answering the questions. In phase II, 500 students with and without reading disabilities will complete the OAT under four different conditions. The four different conditions include: (1) no pacing assistance; (2) question stems and answer options read aloud plus pacing assistance; (3) question stems, answer options, and proper nouns read aloud plus pacing assistance; and (4) full passage read aloud plus pacing assistance.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The project will take place in public elementary schools in Ohio.
Sample
There will be 860 fourth-grade students recruited from approximately 90 schools. The sample will include students with word-reading disabilities and students without disabilities who are average readers.
Assessment
The four accommodation conditions will include: (1) no pacing assistance; (2) question stems and answer options read aloud plus pacing assistance; (3) question stems, answer options, and proper nouns read aloud plus pacing assistance; and (4) full passage read aloud plus pacing assistance.
Research design and methods
In phase I, all 360 students will participate in both conditions. Students will read two passages and questions per condition. To eliminate ordering bias, half of the students will receive the conditions in the reverse order. The entire testing session will be completed in one day. In phase II, students will be divided into four groups. Each student will receive all four conditions; two conditions per day, varying the ordering of the conditions.
Control condition
A comparison group will consist of students without disabilities who are average readers.
Key measures
Outcomes on standardized reading assessments will be used to determine students' eligibility. Student scores on the OAT in different conditions will be used to assess the difference between groups and across conditions.
Data analytic strategy
A hierarchal linear model (HLM) design will be used to compare the outcomes between groups. In addition, HLM will be used to model growth within students across varying levels of support provided with each OAT.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The products of this study include practitioner-oriented documents intended to be used by state testing personnel, peer-reviewed publications, and presentations.
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigator: Allison Gandhi
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
