Book Description

This quantitative, quasi-experimental research study was designed to determine the impact of a computer assisted reading instruction program on the fluency rates and comprehension skills of third and fourth grade students with reading disabilities at an Ohio suburban-metropolitan elementary school. Pretests established the participants' baseline reading skills. The participants' reading progress was monitored, during twenty-week baseline and intervention periods, with weekly measures of fluency and comprehension. Posttests measured the intervention program's impact on the participants' fluency rates and comprehension skills. Results were evaluated through visual analyses of experimental data graphs and by conducting time series matched pair t confidence interval tests to determine the reading intervention program's impact on the participants' reading skills, as measured by AIMSweb reading fluency probes, STAR reading comprehension tests, and Woodcock Johnson IV tests of reading achievement. The study provided two potential benefits for participants, improved reading fluency rates and comprehension skills, and increased value-added measures of student performance on Ohio's Common Core State Standards tests; and a third unintended benefit, improved school district's and teachers' value-added evaluation scores on the Ohio State Report Card.