Response to Intervention in Middle Schools: Practices and Outcomes

Response to intervention (RTI) is advocated in elementary school as a system‐wide, multitiered model of academic and behavioral interventions. Middle schools have begun adopting RTI models based on these existing elementary models. This investigation into current middle school RTI practices describes technical aspects as well as some of cultural and contextual issues surrounding implementation. The study included multiple data collection procedures including surveys, discussion groups, phone interviews, and site visits. Although many schools reported substantial progress with implementation, they recognized rigorous implementation of RTI posed such on‐going challenges as changes in staffing, curricular realignments, very limited selections of screening and progress monitoring tools aligned with their curriculum, and scheduling of secondary and tertiary level interventions.     

An Oral Reading Fluency Assessment for Young Adult Career and Technical Education Students

Educators confront a difficult challenge of quickly and efficiently identifying students with literacy skill deficits in academically diverse career and technical education classes. A statistical examination of oral reading fluency (ORF) of 296 at‐risk students participating in Job Corps tests the hypothesis that a 2‐minute, two‐dimensional ORF task is a useful tool for differentiating the basic literacy skills of these students. This study formed four student groups on this basis and statistically demonstrated the groups were distinct in terms of standardized assessments of reading and cognitive processing: phonological processing, processing speed, memory, and integrated and fluent reading with comprehension. We discuss the implications of these findings for further diagnostic reading assessments and instructional planning.     

Editor's introduction to the forum on defining applied communication scholarship

Although public meetings are a frequent method of public participation and risk communication, little research investigates what citizens think about their use in environmental management. To examine satisfaction with public meetings, residents of two neighboring communities received questionnaires following a public meeting about a local landfill. Respondents included residents who did and did not attend the meeting. Irrespective of whether respondents had ever attended a public meeting, meeting expectations and perceptions of relational/informational communication at meetings, including whether respondents thought meeting organizers were genuinely interested in participants' comments or meetings were informative, predicted satisfaction. Perceived risk associated with the recent meeting's topic and credibility of government agencies that frequently conduct meetings also predicted satisfaction.     

Relation and Interactions Among Reading Fluency and Competence for Adult Education Learners

Statistical analyses of data from an academically diverse sample of 276 adult basic and secondary education learners extends understanding of the relation of and interactions between oral reading fluency and reading competence indices. Significant interactions between total word rate and word error rate that differed in relation to two measures of reading competence suggest that adult literacy instructors should emphasize fluency instruction to a greater or lesser degree depending on whether the major goal of instruction is academic reading (e.g., being able to comprehend a textbook) or functional reading (e.g., being able to fill out a job application).