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Addressing Significant Disproportionality in Ohio

Did you know?

Educators in Ohio are:

Two times as likely to:

Identify Black students with intellectual disabilities;

Place Black students in restrictive settings; and

Remove Black students for discipline.

Three times as likely to identify Black students as having an emotional disturbance.

Three times as likely to expel Black students from school.

In 2016, the federal Office of Special Education Programs amended the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) regulations relating to significant disproportionality. This disproportionality generally occurs when students of one racial or ethnic group are more likely to receive special education identification, placement in a more restrictive setting, or more out of class discipline compared to all other students, thus denying them access to instruction and the support they need to succeed academically.

The IDEA requires the Department to promote equity by identifying and preventing significant disproportionality. Looking at disproportionality data helps ensure that the right services are getting to the right students in the right way.

Manuals and Guidance

Significant Disproportionality Resources

Implementing disporportionality Regulations

As these changes are implemented, the Department will continue to gather stakeholder groups to offer feedback and help design policies, practices, procedures and supports to address disproportionality.

As you prepare EMIS student data, it is important to confirm the accuracy of discipline data submitted. The Department recommends special education staff work with personnel responsible for reporting discipline events to ensure accuracy of these data:

Reported number of days of discipline;

Discipline type;

Race of the student; and

Disability condition (or lack thereof) in the student detail record.

Find more information about the new disproportionality regulations here.

Ohio Department of Education Resources

View this presentation from OCALICONLINE 2020 to learn more about how to address disproportionality in Ohio schools. Speakers cover the three categories of disproportionality, preview changes reflected in the disproportionality section new to the 2020-2021 Special Education Profile, and share one Ohio school district's journey to address racial inequities over time.

Contact

(P) 614-466-2650
(Toll free) 877-644-6338
(F) 614-728-1097
25 S. Front Street, Mail Stop 409
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Exceptionalchildren@education.ohio.gov

For callers using TTY, please call Ohio Relay Service at (800) 750-0750.

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Equity in Special Education: Disproportionality

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Educators in Ohio are: Two times as likely to: Identify Black students with intellectual disabilities; Place Black students in restrictive settings; and Remove Black students for discipline. Three times as likely to identify Black students as having an emotional disturbance. Three times as likely to expel Black students from school.

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Trunk Work: Strong Systems, Structures, and Supports

As a collective state-wide group of education professionals, we are all responsible when it comes to meeting the needs of diverse and complex learners. Integrating supports that represent ALL learners, across all levels of the state-system, is a daunting task. This means we will have to work collaboratively across licensure areas, offices, and other silos of practice to ensure that ALL learners receive the expertise we each individually bring to the field. As a collaborative group, we will need to rely on strong guidelines and processes to planfully connect supports and implement to improve learner outcomes. Some examples of these structures within our system include academic learning standards, the assess, plan, teach cycle - Ohio Improvement Process (OIP), Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS), etc.

Some examples of content targeting this "trunk work" can be found in:

Chapter 2: Designing Rich Tier I Instruction and Assessment: Overview

Chapter 2: Sorting and Clustering Standards for Instruction: Integrated Units

Chapter 4: Language and Communication Access: ALL In!

Chapter 10: Curriculum Screening, Audit, Selection, and Deselection

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Shelley Moore: Transforming Inclusive Education

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Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teaching Reading: Implementing Structured Literacy

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Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teaching Reading: Implementing Structured Literacy

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Webinar - Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teaching Reading - Dr. Louisa Moats 15May2019

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Collective Teacher Efficacy is the collective belief of teachers in their ability to positively affect students. With an effect size of d=1.57 Collective Teacher Efficacy is strongly correlated with student achievement. Here is a quick overview of John Hattie's "new number one" influence.

John Hattie and his team have presented Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) as the "new number one" influence related to student achievement several times, e.g. at the Annual Visible Learning Conference (2016) or the Collaborative Impact Conference 2017. Although Hattie's latest published list of 195 effects in The Applicability of Visible Learning to Higher Education (2015) puts CTE only in second place, its effect size of d=1.57 is still huge: it is more than two times bigger than that of feedback ( d=0.72), and almost three times bigger than the effect of classroom management ( d=0.52). The message seems to be clear: together teachers can achieve more, especially if they collectively believe that they can do so!

Hattie's new factor is based on Rachel Jean Eells' "Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Collective Teacher Efficacy and Student Achievement" ( PDF). For her Ph.D. thesis at the Loyola University Chicago, she has conducted a meta-analysis of 26 studies on Collective Teacher Efficacy and found that "the weighted average effect size of r-mean (outlier removed) was 0.617″. This number can easily be converted into Cohen's d=1.568, the number Hattie reports.

The concept of Collective Teacher Efficacy itself is much older. It was introduced in the 1990s by Albert Bandura and is rooted in his concept of self-efficacy, Bandura (1993, 1997). He defines collective efficacy as "a group's shared belief in the conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment." Bandura found that the positive effects of CTE on student academic performance more than outweigh the negative effects of low socioeconomic status.

His findings were later confirmed by Goddard, Hoy, and Hoy (2000). In their studies, they could demonstrate that between-school differences of collective teacher efficacy were more important in explaining student achievement than socioeconomic status. Moreover, Hoy, Sweetland, and Smith (2002) found that the strength of CTE helps the positive effects of individual teacher efficacy and vice versa. A stronger collective teacher efficacy seems to encourage individual teachers to make a more effective use of the skills they already have.

According to Hattie's presentation at the Collaborative Impact Conference 2017 "Collective Teacher Efficacy" is not about making teachers feel good about themselves. It is more complicated than just believing you can make a difference collectively. One of the authors that come closest to Hattie's definition "collaborative conversation based on evidence" is Jenni Donohoo with her book " Collective Efficacy: How Educators' Beliefs Impact Student Learning ".

For further reading and a practical guide about how to build Collective Teacher Efficacy in your school, you should read the short and excellent Issue Brief " Building Collective Efficacy " by Dana Brinson and Lucy Steiner.

Update

In recent a video John Hattie explains what Collective Teacher Efficacy is, and what it isn't. Have a look.

References:

BANDURA, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychologist, 28 (2), 117-148. (Abstract)

BANDURA, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY, US: W H Freeman. (Book)

BRINSON & STEINER (2007): Building Collective Efficacy: How Leaders Inspire Teachers to Achieve. Issue Brief. The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement. ( PDF)

EELLS, R. J. (2011): Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Collective Teacher Efficacy and Student Achievement, (Abstract / Full text)

GODDARD, HOY, WOOLFOLK HOY (2000): Collective Teacher Efficacy: Its Meaning, Measure, and Impact on Student Achievement. In: American Educational Research Journal Vol 37, Issue 2, pp. 479 - 507 (Abstract)

HATTIE, J. (2015): The Applicability of Visible Learning to Higher Education. In: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1 (1), 79-91. (Abstract)

HATTIE, J. (2016). Third Visible Learning Annual Conference: Mindframes and Maximizers, Washington, DC, July 11, 2016. (Programme)

HOY, SWEETLAND, SMITH (2002). Toward an organizational model of achievement in high schools: The significance of collective efficacy. Educational Administration Quarterly, 38 (1), 77-93. (Abstract)

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Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE) according to John Hattie - VISIBLE LEARNING

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Collective Teacher Efficacy is the collective belief of teachers in their ability to positively affect students. With an effect size of d=1.57 Collective Teacher Efficacy is strongly correlated with student achievement. Here is a quick overview of John Hattie's "new...Read more ›

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To do this, we collected nearly 30,000 in-the-moment student surveys. Using a technology that prompted students in grades six through 12 to answer a few questions at random times during class, we captured a snapshot of their real-time reactions to school. We also surveyed third through fifth graders during the last five minutes of class, and found that elementary students were just as capable as their older schoolmates of providing rich and telling insight into their lives at school.

Across our five partner school systems, we also observed nearly a thousand full-length lessons at all grade levels from K-12, and reviewed almost 5,000 assignments and more than 20,000 individual student work samples. We visited each participating school daily for a week straight at three points in the year, which gave us the chance to see the same teachers and students at the beginning, middle, and end of their time together (and offered a much more comprehensive lens on the learning environment than a single day's lesson could have). These classrooms were not substantially different than the others in their districts, and they represented a wide range: those with new teachers and veterans; those at all age levels; a diverse range of subjects; mixed-ability classes and tracked ones. Four of these school systems were located in states that use standards aligned to the Common Core State Standards; one was not.

To assess the quality of content students worked on, we looked at four elements of every assignment: (1) whether the content in the assignments was aligned to relevant grade-level academic standards; (2) whether the assignments gave students the chance to engage in important content-specific practices, like citing evidence from rigorous texts in literacy, or discussing mathematical ideas using precise mathematical language; (3) whether the assignments gave students a chance to learn relevant content that built their knowledge of the world or helped them see how what they were learning could be applied in the real world; and (4) student performance on both the assignments themselves and against the bar for their grade-level standards.

To study instruction, we observed full-length class periods and assessed (1) whether students were doing what they were asked; (2) whether they were being asked to work on grade-level content; and (3) whether teachers were using instructional practices that gave students the chance to do most of the thinking in the lesson.

We surveyed teachers to capture their knowledge of grade-level standards, their opinions on those standards, and their beliefs about their classroom practices and their students' abilities. We conducted focus groups with nearly 100 teachers and interviewed 24 school leaders at multiple times throughout the year. And we assessed a large set of extant data provided to us by our partner districts on course access, enrollment policies, and district policies on curriculum adoption, among others.

We hypothesized that students' experiences of school were influenced by a confluence of factors-among them, the quality of the work they were doing, the instruction they received, and the expectations of their teachers-and that those factors would interact to have an impact on their academic growth. Taken together with students' in-the-moment survey responses, we were able to triangulate students' perspectives with the classes they were in, the work they were doing and instruction they were receiving, and their academic outcomes.

In addition to amassing this rich data set, we also sat down with a smaller subset of students (more than 50 over two school years), and got to know them. We observed them in class and spoke to them about their experiences, their likes and dislikes, their families, their goals. Just a few of those students are profiled here. While their names and identifying characteristics have been changed throughout this report, their stories help us understand what the data means in the real lives of individual young people.

They also help us understand what real, tangible changes school systems can make-starting tomorrow and over the long haul-to provide more students with school experiences that are meaningful, that honor their aspirations for themselves and their families, and that give them a fighting chance to meet those goals.
For our complete methodology, including further explanation of our analytical approaches and full analysis results, see the Technical Appendix.

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What can 4,000 students teach us about school? Read The Opportunity Myth.

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Question: What does cognitive science tell us about the existence of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners and the best way to teach them?
The idea that people may differ in their ability to learn new material depending on its modality-that is, whether the child hears it, sees it, or touches it-has been tested for over 100 years. And the idea that these differences might prove useful in the classroom has been around for at least 40 years.

What cognitive science has taught us is that children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn' t affect his educational achievement. What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content' s best modality. All students learn more when content drives the choice of modality. In this column, I will describe some of the research on matching modality strength to the modality of instruction. I will also address why the idea of tailoring instruction to a student' s best modality is so enduring-despite substantial evidence that it is wrong.

* * *

Discussions of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners* are common in educational literature, teacher-preparation programs, and professional development workshops. The theory that students learn more when content is presented in their best modality seems to make sense, seems to be supported by classroom experiences, and offers the hope of maximizing each child's learning by planning different lessons for each type of learner. For example, within one kindergarten class, the auditory learner could listen to stories about different holidays around the world, while the visual learner examined pictures of holiday celebrants, and the kinesthetic learner handled costumes and artifacts associated with the holidays. But is the theory correct? And, whether or not the theory is correct, might it not also be true that all of the kindergartners would learn the most about holidays by listening to stories, looking at pictures, and handling costumes?

Before we tackle the research on using modalities to enhance student learning, let's review a few things that cognitive scientists know about modalities.
1. Some memories are stored as visual and auditory representations-but most memories are stored in terms of meaning.
Cognitive psychologists have used formal laboratory tasks to investigate the role of modality in memory. An important finding from that research is that memory is usually stored independent of any modality. You typically store memories in terms of meaning-not in terms of whether you saw, heard, or physically interacted with the information. For example, your knowledge that a fire requires oxygen to burn is unlikely to be stored as a visual or an auditory memory. The initial experience by which you learned this fact may have been visual (watching a flame go out under a glass) or auditory (hearing an explanation), but the resulting representation of that knowledge in your mind is neither visual nor auditory.

How did cognitive scientists figure this out? An important clue that memories are stored by their meaning is the types of errors people make on memory tests. People who listen to a story will later confidently "recognize" sentences that never appeared in the story-so long as these new sentences are consistent with the story's meaning (Bransford and Franks, 1971). The same phenomenon is observed with purely visual stimuli. People rapidly lose the memory of the precise images that make up a picture story (e.g., whether a character faced left or right), but they retain the meaning or gist of the story (Gernsbacher, 1985).

These findings do not mean that you can' t store auditory or visual information. You can, and you do. For example, if I ask you "Which is a darker green: a Christmas tree or a frozen pea?" you'll likely report that you would answer this question by visually imagining the two objects side by side and evaluating which is a darker green. If I ask you whether Bill Clinton or George W. Bush has a deeper voice, you will likely report that you would answer by generating an auditory memory of each.

The mind is capable of storing memories in a number of different formats, and laboratory research indicates that a single experience usually leads to more than one type of representation. When subjects view a picture story, they do have a visual representation of what the pictures look like, in addition to the meaning-based representation. They usually don't remember the visual representation for long, however, largely because when they see the pictures, they are thinking about what they mean in order to understand the story. If, in contrast, they were asked to remember visual details of the pictures and to ignore the story they tell, they would have a better memory for the visual details and the meaning-based representation would be worse. (This principle is another example of a generalization made in a previous column: What's stored in memory is what you think about. To read that column, see "Students Remember ... What They Think About," in the Summer 2003 issue of American Educator.
2. The different visual, auditory, and meaning-based representations in our minds cannot serve as substitutes for one another.
Our minds have these different types of representations for a reason: Different representations are more or less effective for storing different types of information. Visual representations, for example, are poor for storing meaning because they are often consistent with more than one interpretation: A static image of a car driving on a snowy hill could just as well depict a car struggling up the hill or slipping backwards down the hill. And some concepts do not lend themselves well to pictures: How would one depict "genius" or "democracy" in a picture? On the other hand, the particular shade of green of a frozen pea would be stored visually because the information is inherently visual.

Because these different memory representations store different types of information, you usually cannot use one representation to substitute for another. This point is illustrated in an experiment by Chad Dodson and Arthur Shimamura (2000). They asked subjects to listen to two word lists and to judge whether or not each word on the second list (new words) had appeared on the first list (studied words), as shown below. The interesting twist was that each word on both lists was spoken by either a man (depicted by boldface) or a woman (depicted by italics). If a word had appeared on both lists, it might be spoken in the same voice ("Window") or in different voices ("Doctor"). The question is whether changing the gender of the voice (and, therefore, the auditory experience) influenced memory for the studied words.

Dodson and Shimamura found that whether the gender of the voice repeated or switched made no difference at all in remembering the word (75 percent versus 73 percent accuracy). That is, subjects were just as likely to remember "Doctor" as "Window." But when subjects judged that a word was on the first list, they also had to say whether a man or woman had said it. For this judgment, subjects were more accurate if the same gender voice spoke the word on the first and the second list (57 percent) than if the voice switched genders (39 percent). This experiment indicates that subjects do store auditory information, but it only helps them remember the part of the memory that is auditory-the sound of the voice-and not the word itself, which is stored in terms of its meaning.
3. Children probably do differ in how good their visual and auditory memories are, but in most situations, it makes little difference in the classroom.
Let's return to classroom education. We've said that some memories are stored visually, some auditorily, and some in terms of meaning. And it's likely that some students should have a relatively better visual memory or auditory memory. Shouldn't that mean that some students will more easily remember material that is presented in their stronger modality? It does, but what advantage would this superior memory provide for the student in a classroom? Teachers almost always want students to remember what things mean, not what they look like or sound like. For the vast majority of education, vision and audition are usually just vehicles that carry the important information teachers want students to learn. There are some limited types of materials for which an exact visual or auditory representation is helpful. The child with a good visual memory might have an edge over his peers in learning the location of capitals on a map of Europe, for example. That task is inherently visual. The child with a good auditory memory might learn the correct accent for a foreign language more quickly. (And the child with a good kinesthetic memory may have an edge in sports, handwriting, or painting.) But most of what we want children to learn is based on meaning, so their superior memory in a specific modality doesn't give them an advantage just because material is presented in their preferred modality. Whether information is presented auditorily or visually, the student must extract and store its meaning.

What does the research say about teaching to a child's strongest modality?

Because the vast majority of educational content is stored in terms of meaning and does not rely on visual, auditory, or kinesthetic memory, it is not surprising that researchers have found very little support for the idea that offering instruction in a child's best modality will have a positive effect on his learning. A few studies show a positive effect of accounting for students' best modality, but many studies show no effect (Kampwirth and Bates, 1980; Arter and Jenkins, 1979). The most comprehensive review was conducted by Kenneth Kavale and Steven Forness (1987); it is especially relevant for teachers because it includes many studies that tested the effectiveness of specific instructional approaches (as opposed to laboratory-based exercises). Kavale and Forness analyzed 39 studies using a technique called meta-analysis, which allows the combination of data from different studies. By combining many studies into a single statistical analysis, the researchers have greater power to detect a small effect, if one exists.

The initial results indicated that teaching in the child's best modality might have a small impact on learning, but closer inspection of the studies qualified that conclusion. The studies showing the largest effects had methodological problems. For example, a common error in studies of modality is a failure to ensure that the lesson plans and materials are equivalent in every way except modality (since that is the only way to be sure that any effect found is due to modality). Some studies have used materials specially-prepared for the visual and auditory conditions and then compared those to "regular teaching materials." It is possible that the specially prepared materials were more interesting or better organized than the "regular teaching" materials. This type of mistake calls the results into question because no one can tell if the results were caused by the change of modality or by the use of better materials. (The results may demonstrate that children learn more when teachers use better materials.) When Kavale and Forness limited the meta-analysis to studies with few or no such methodological problems, the modality effect disappeared.

Kavale and Forness's meta-analysis provides substantial evidence that tailoring instruction to students' modality is not effective; across these many well-designed studies, such tailoring had no educational effect. But readers should bear in mind that it is impossible to prove a negative: We cannot be certain that modality theory is incorrect because it is always possible that we haven't looked for just the right sort of evidence. An inventive theorist could always create a new version of the theory with predictions that hadn't yet been tested. Nonetheless, the meta-analysis included a large number of studies that tested many different hypotheses (see " How Has Modality Theory Been Tested?" for examples).

Although it is technically true that the theory hasn't been (and will never be) disproved, we can say that the possible effects of matching instructional modality to a student's modality strength have been extensively studied and have yielded no positive evidence. If there was an effect of any consequence, it is extremely likely that we would know it by now.
Teachers should focus on the content's best modality-not the student's.
We have seen that the mind uses different representations to store different types of information and that these representations are poor substitutes for one another. That indicates that teachers should indeed think about the modality in which they present material, but their goal should be to find the content's best modality, not to search (in vain) for the students' best modality. If the teacher wants students to learn and remember what something looks like, then the presentation should be visual. For example, if students are to appreciate the appearance of a Mayan pyramid, it would be much more effective to view a picture than to hear a verbal description.

Many topics may call for information in more than one modality. In a unit on the Civil War, in addition to lectures and reading, it might be appropriate to include recordings of martial music used to inspire the troops, visual representations (maps) of battlefields, and perhaps a chance to handle the pack and equipment the troops carried so that students could appreciate their heft. Similarly, if students are to learn the form of an English sonnet, they should hear the stress forms of iambic pentameter, and then see a visual representation of it.

There are other ways in which modality of instruction can influence the effectiveness of a given lesson-but the influence applies to all children (see " The Content's Best Modality Is Key"). Experiences in different modalities simply for the sake of including different modalities should not be the goal. Material should be presented auditorily or visually because the information that the teacher wants students to understand is best conveyed in that modality. There is no benefit to students in teachers' attempting to find auditory presentations of the Mayan pyramids for the students who have good auditory memory. Everyone should see the picture. The important idea from this column is that modality matters in the same way for all students.

If modality theory is so wrong, why does it feel so right?

The belief in modality theory is very common among teachers. More than 25 years ago, Arter and Jenkins (1979) reported that more than 90 percent of special education teachers believed it. Today, the prevalence of books describing the theory and lesson plans suggesting ways to implement it suggest that it still enjoys widespread acceptance. Why is the theory so widely accepted if there is no research evidence to support it?

One factor is that it fits with a more general assumption that many teachers hold: There are genuinely important differences among students in how they learn. Modality gives us an easily understood way to think about the differences among children and it offers a hopeful message-a relatively easy adjustment to teaching practice may provide a boost to kids who are struggling. Further, everyone else believes it. Although false, the truth of modality theory has become "common knowledge."

I think that these factors may contribute to the belief, but I also think that most teachers wouldn't believe the theory if it did not seem consistent with their own experience. There are two ways that a teacher might see what looks like evidence for modality theory in the classroom. First, a teacher who believes the theory may interpret ambiguous situations as support for the theory. For example, a teacher might verbally explain to a student-several times-the idea of "borrowing" in subtraction without success. Then the teacher draws a diagram that more explicitly represents that the "3" in the tens place really represents "30." Suddenly, the concept clicks for the student. The teacher thinks "Aha. He's a visual learner. Once I drew the diagram, he understood." But the more likely explanation is that the diagram would have helped any student because it is a good way to represent a difficult concept. The teacher interprets the student's success in terms of modality theory because she has been told the theory is correct and because it seems to explain her experience. But cognitive scientists have long known that we all notice and remember examples that confirm our beliefs and, without meaning to, ignore and forget evidence that does not.

Modality theory may also seem correct because, as we have discussed, children probably do differ in their abilities with different types of memories. I remember my daughter commenting (out of the blue, as 4-year-olds will) that her preschool teacher said "white" in a way that made the "h" faintly, but distinctly, audible. I was impressed that she had noticed this difference, remembered it, and could reproduce it. So my daughter may have a good auditory memory, and that might help her in certain tasks, such as remembering regional accents, should she decide to be an actress. It does not mean that I want her teachers to ensure that she receives primarily auditory input in her coursework, because her superior auditory memory will not help her when she needs to remember meaning. But it is easy to see how one might (mistakenly) believe that complex material would be easier for her to master if presented auditorily. Further, as the sidebar "The Content's Best Modality Is Key" indicates, there are various ways in which modality does strengthen instruction (for all kids)-and it's easy to imagine that the effect has to do with a student's modal preference when in fact the effect is due to the content's best modality.

Daniel T. Willingham is professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Virginia and author of Cognition: The Thinking Animal. His research focuses on the role of consciousness in learning. Readers can pose specific question to "Ask the Cognitive Scientist," American Educator, 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20001 or to amered@aft.org. Future colums will try to address readers' questions.

*The notion of kinesthetic learners is a big part of modality theory. However, this article will focus on the other two modalities because what's commonly considered a "kinesthetic learning experience" is almost always a misnomer. Kinesthetic information comes from the joints and muscles and tells the brain about the location of body parts. Kinesthetic learning is the process of making movements automatic; it's the type of learning you do as you slowly master typing, riding a bike, or mincing garlic. In the classroom, a "kinesthetic learning experience" is usually taken to mean any activity that involves movement, e.g., dissecting a worm or using blocks to explore fractions. But the learning that comes from these activities almost always goes along with changes in mental activity-the learning is not really part of the kinesthetic experience. For example, if I handle a Greek costume (rather than watch you handle it), I am the one who decides which part of it to explore, whether or not to try it on, and so on. True kinesthetic learning experiences, like practicing handwriting, do not make up much of the curriculum. To avoid continual qualifications about what is or is not a true kinesthetic learning experience, I will refer mainly to visual and auditory modalities. The conclusions drawn also apply to kinesthetic learning experiences. ( back to article)

†This meta-analysis was not without controversy. Rita Dunn, who has proposed a theory consistent with modality effects (e.g., Dunn and Dunn, 1992; 1993; Dunn, Dunn and Perrin, 1994) wrote a rather acrimonious criticism of the Kavale and Forness study (Dunn, 1990), to which they replied (Kavale and Forness, 1990). Dunn later published her own meta-analysis (Dunn et al., 1995), which appeared to provide strong support for a large modality effect. Kavale and his colleagues (1998) noted, however, that only one of the studies reviewed had appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. All the others were unpublished doctoral dissertations, and 21 of these were from Dunn's home institution, St. John's University. This is a problem because of confirmation bias-a tendency in researchers to unconsciously slant the design of a study and its interpretation to favor the outcome they hope to observe (Wason, 1960; Mahoney and DeMonbreun, 1981). That's why having impartial, expert reviewers is vital to research. Almost none of the studies included in Dunn's meta-analysis underwent scrutiny by outside reviewers, which makes it hard to take seriously. ( back to article)

References

Arter, J. A. and Jenkins, J. A. (1979). Differential diagnosis-prescriptive teaching: A critical appraisal. Review of Educational Research, 49, 517-555.

Bransford, J. D. and Franks, J. J. (1971). The abstraction of linguistic ideas. Cognitive Psychology, 2, 331-350.

Dodson, C. S. and Shimamura, A. P. (2000). Differential effects of cue dependency on item and source memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 26, 1023-1044.

Dunn, R. (1990). Bias over substance: A critical analysis of Kavale and Forness' report on modality-based instruction. Exceptional Children, 56, 352-356.

Dunn, R. and Dunn, K., (1992). Teaching Elementary Students Through Their Individual Learning Styles. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Dunn, R. and Dunn, K., (1993). Teaching Secondary Students Through Their Individual Learning Styles. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Dunn, R., Dunn, K., and Perrin, K.J. (1994). Teaching Young Children Through Their Individual Learning Styles. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Dunn, R., Griggs, S. A., Olson, J., Beasly, M. and Gorman, B. S. (1995). A meta-analytic validation of the Dunn and Dunn model of learning style preferences. Journal of Educational Research, 88, 353-362.

Gernsbacher, M. A. (1985). Surface information loss in comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 324-363.

Kampwirth, T. J. and Bates, M. (1980). Modality preference and teaching method. A review of the research. Academic Therapy, 15, 597-605.

Kavale, K. A. and Forness, S. R. (1990). Substance over style: A rejoinder to Dunn's animadversions. Exceptional Children, 56 (4), 357-361.

Kavale, K. A. and Forness, S. R. (1987). Substance over style: Assessing the efficacy of modality testing and teaching. Exceptional Children, 54(3), 228-239.

Kavale, K. A., Hirshoren, A., Forness, S. R. (1998). Meta-analytic validation of the Dunn and Dunn Model of Learning-Style Preferences: A critique of what was Dunn. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 13, 75-80.

Mahoney, M. J. and DeMonbreun, B. G. (1981). Problem-solving bias in scientists. In R. D. Tweney, M. E. Doherty, and C. R. Mynatt (Eds.) On Scientific Thinking (pp. 139-144). New York: Columbia University Press.

Wason, P. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 129-140.

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Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?

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Question: What does cognitive science tell us about the existence of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners and the best way to teach them?The idea that people may differ in their ability to learn new material depending on its modality-that is, whether the child hears it, sees it, or touches it-has been tested for over 100 years.

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Bringing Support TO the Students - Just Let Them Eat Cake

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Bringing Support TO the Students - Just Let Them Eat Cake

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Bringing Support TO the Students Just Let them Eat Cake!

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Children of the Code - What's at Stake, Reading Matters

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Children of the Code - What's at Stake, Reading Matters

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Reading builds vocabulary. Reading makes you smarter. Trouble with reading undermines faith in learning and success in school.

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The Simple View of Reading - It's Not That Simple

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The Simple View of Reading - It's Not That Simple

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CarolynTurner   "The Simple View of Reading - It's Not So Simple"

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Senior Producer and Correspondent

Emily Hanford has been working in public media for more than two decades as a reporter, producer, editor, news director and program host. Her work has won numerous honors including a duPont-Columbia University Award and a Casey Medal. In 2017, she won the Excellence in Media Reporting on Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association. Her groundbreaking podcast episode Hard Words, on why children aren't being taught to read, was a winner of the inaugural Public Service award from EWA in 2019. Emily is a member of the EWA Journalist Advisory Board and a longtime mentor for EWA's "new to the beat" program. She is a frequent speaker and moderator. Emily is based in the Washington, D.C. area. She is a graduate of Amherst College.

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Emily Hanford has been working in public media for more than two decades as a reporter, producer, editor, news director and program host. Her work has won numerous honors including a duPont-Columbia University Award and a Casey Medal. In 2017, she won the Excellence in Media Reporting on Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association.

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Linda Farrell - The Simple View of Reading

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Linda Farrell - The Simple View of Reading

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Five Components of Reading   Michelle Elia   Ohio Literacy Lead

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You Can't Intervene Your Way Out of a Tier 1 Problem

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You Can't Intervene Your Way Out of a Tier 1 Problem

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Michelle Elia  "You Can't Intervene Your Way Out of a Tier One Problem

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Teacher Professional Learning | Literacy, Math | MTSS

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Curriculum Adoption

Curriculum Implementation

Literacy Coaching & Site Implementation Support

Early Literacy Planning & Implementation Collaboration

Publisher Approved Professional Learning

Online Elementary Reading Academy

Adolescent Literacy Solutions

Curriculum Adoption

Curriculum Implementation

Rise in Math

Math Coaching

Online Math Academies + Coaching

Onsite Math Academies

Teaching Reading Sourcebook 3rd Edition

Curriculum Adoption

Curriculum Implementation

Literacy Coaching & Site Implementation Support

Early Literacy Planning & Implementation Collaboration

Publisher Approved Professional Learning

Online Elementary Reading Academy

Adolescent Literacy Solutions

Curriculum Adoption

Curriculum Implementation

Rise in Math

Math Coaching

Online Math Academies + Coaching

Onsite Math Academies

Teaching Reading Sourcebook 3rd Edition

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CORE's Vocabulary Handbook - Teacher Professional Learning | Literacy, Math | MTSS

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Vocabulary Handbook For all educators who are working to improve reading achievement, this handbook provides clear instructional approaches for successfully building students' vocabulary knowledge-knowledge essential for strong reading comprehension. Why You Need This Handbook With teacher-friendly sample lesson models, this book can be used to boost vocabulary instruction in any reading program.

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Literacy Academy 2020: Knowledge Gap - Natalie Wexler

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Why American Children Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years - Natalie Wexler

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Why American Children Haven't Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years - Natalie Wexler

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Schools Are Failing to Teach Kids How to Read - The Atlantic.pdf

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Elementary Education Has Gone Terribly Wrong - Natalie Wexler

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Elementary Education Has Gone Terribly Wrong - Natalie Wexler

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Elementary-School Curriculum Is All Wrong - The Atlantic.pdf

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William Van Cleve - Transcription Skills

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William Van Cleve - Transcription Skills

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Download the Course Companion document before starting this course. You can use the Companion Document to take notes on your learning, address reflection prompts, and as an easy way to retrieve course resources.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

Explain the key processes associated with transcription

Analyze their current practice to identify areas to improve their transcription instruction

Consider This Scenario

Connection Point

In your Course Companion Document, consider these questions:

Can you relate to this scenario? In what ways are your challenges in literacy instruction similar or different?

Mrs. Beale is a 3rd grade general education teacher. She has been working with her students throughout the year to increase their ability to write out sentences and beginning paragraphs by hand. While several of her students are on their way to becoming proficient writers, she notices that several of them experience barriers that make fluent writing difficult. Some of her students start to write sentences but struggle to complete them. Others have difficulty working through the spelling of certain words and lose their train of thought when they try to write a word that they don't know how to spell. Others can provide elaborate detail when talking about what they want to write, but do not translate that level of detail into their writing.

What is Transcription?

"Transcription is the process of transferring words from the mind to the page...This process includes handwriting, word processing, and spelling..." - William Van Cleave

Transcription is a key component of the writing process. The Simple View of Writing (Berninger & Amtmann, 2003) posits that transcription skills, along with text generation, executive functioning and memory, is required for students to become effective writers.

Figure 1. The SIMPLE VIEW OF Writing

Transcription Skills with William Van Cleave

In this video, William Van Cleave covers the vital components that must be in place to build students' transcription skills. He also discusses some strategies for improving transcription instruction.

After the video, answer these questions in your Course Companion:

Mr. Van Cleave emphasizes that transcription instruction should be "daily, direct and explicit" every day. Consider your classroom or building:

Would you say that transcription instruction is "daily, direct and explicit"?

If so, what are you seeing or doing that makes you say this? If not, what steps can you take to begin daily, direct and explicit instruction?

Knowledge Check

Take this brief quiz to test your knowledge. Click the square button to expand the quiz.

Resources

Read "The Importance of Teaching Handwriting" by Louis Spear-Swirling.
As you read, try to identify 2-3 takeaways from the article that you find to be helpful. For each takeaway, answer the following questions in your Course Companion:

How does this challenge or affirm what I am currently doing in my classroom or building?

What are the specific steps I might need to take to begin implementing this new learning in my classroom or building practice?

Course Reflection

Answer the following questions in your Course Companion:

Identify one or two key takeaways from what you learned in this course. How can you begin to implement your learning in your work in your classroom, building or district?

What barriers do you anticipate in implementing this new strategy or approach?

To Learn More

The following resource can help you learn more about transcription:

Feedback:

Please take a moment to fill out this feedback form. We will use your feedback to improve this and other courses.

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Download the Course Companion document before starting this course. You can use the Companion Document to take notes on your learning, address reflection prompts, and as an easy way to retrieve course resources.

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Writing to Read - ccny_report_2010_writing.pdf

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The Alphabetic Principal: From Phonological Awareness to Reading Words

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The Alphabetic Principal: From Phonological Awareness to Reading Words

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What Is The Alphabetic Principle?

Connecting letters with their sounds to read and write is called the " alphabetic principle." For example, a child who knows that the written letter "m" makes the /mmm/ sound is demonstrating the alphabetic principle.

Letters in words tell us how to correctly "sound out" (i.e., read) and write words. To master the alphabetic principle, readers must have phonological awareness skills and be able to recognize individual sounds in spoken words. Learning to read and write becomes easier when sounds associated with letters are recognized automatically.

The alphabetic principle has two parts:

1. Alphabetic understanding is knowing that words are made up of letters that represent the sounds of speech.

2. Phonological recoding is knowing how to translate the letters in printed words into the sounds they make to read and pronounce the words accurately.

The alphabetic principle is critical in reading and understanding the meaning of text. In typical reading development, children learn to use the alphabetic principle fluently and automatically. This allows them to focus their attention on understanding the meaning of the text, which is the primary purpose of reading.

Learning and applying the alphabetic principle takes time and is difficult for most children. There are many letters to learn the sounds of, and there are many ways to arrange the letters to produce the vast number of different words used in print. Also, in English, the same letter can represent more than one sound, depending on the word (e.g., the /a/ sounds are different in the words "mat" and "mate"). In Spanish, by contrast, which also includes the vowel "a" in its alphabet, the /a/ sound is always pronounced the same way (e.g., the /a/ in "casa") regardless what word it is in.

Irregular Words

Some words, called irregular words, cannot be read accurately using the alphabetic principle to "sound them out" (e.g., the words "was," "is," and "know" are not accurately pronounced using phonics rules). Irregular words require a different teaching approach than teaching how to read words that follow a rule-based, letter-sound structure.

Despite the presence of irregular words, learning the alphabetic principle thoroughly and using it to read unfamiliar words, is a much better strategy than trying to memorize how to accurately read each word as a whole word, or guessing what the word might be based on its first letter and the words before or after it in the text.

Explicit Phonics Instruction

Explicit phonics instruction-i.e., how the alphabetic principle works, step by step-and extensive practice enables most children to learn the alphabetic principle. Below are effective strategies for teaching the alphabetic principle. These same strategies can be used with children who struggle learning to read, including children with reading disabilities or dyslexia. For students who struggle, highly systematic and explicit instruction plus lots of accuracy practice will be necessary for them to learn the alphabetic principle thoroughly.

All alphabetic languages can be taught using phonics and the alphabetic principle to guide instruction. However, alphabetic languages-English, Spanish, French, Turkish, Vietnamese, and many others-differ dramatically in their alphabetic principle complexity. For example, English is quite complex-there are many rules and exceptions to those rules that need to be learned to read and write correctly. Spanish is much less complex. Letters typically make only one sound regardless of the word they are in and rule exceptions are very few compared to English. For example, Spanish vowels only make one sound. In some cases, the vowel is silent as the letter "u" is in the word, "que."

Teach Students To Connect Letters To Their Most Common Sound Or Sounds

All 26 letters in English make at least one predictable or common sound depending on the other letters in the word. For example, each of the three letters in the word "mat" makes its most common sound. In the word "meat" the "m" and "t" make the same sound as they do in "mat" and the "ea" letter combination makes its most common sound when these letters are together in a word. Notice that in the word "meat," there is only one sound for "ea" even though there are two letters. Teachers can sequence and deliver instruction in a way that helps students efficiently learn the "rules" for the different sounds that letters and letter combinations make.

Teach Students To Read Words Using What They Know About The Sounds That Letters And Letter Combinations Make

In using the alphabetic principle, students "blend" the sounds made by individual letters into a whole word. For example, the sounds /m/ /a/ /t/ made by the letters "m," "a," and "t" are blended together seamlessly to make the word "mat." Students should begin learning to read by producing the individual sounds in words and blending the sounds together quickly to produce the whole word with simple CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant) before progressing to more complex word types that follow other important phonics rules. During instruction, teachers can use a strategy such as "I Do, We Do, You Do" to show students what to do (how to blend), practice with them (students do it with the teacher), and then the students do it on their own to show their teacher they know how to do it. Teaching several of the most common sounds for a few individual letters allows students to read many different words depending on letter order. Teaching other rule types (e.g., letter combinations such as "ea" and "th," the "Bossy E" rule when "e" comes at the end of a CVC word, and so forth) enables students to accurately read a vast number of words they have never encountered in text.

Have Students Begin Reading Texts That Contain A High Percentage Of Decodable Words

Early in learning to read, students can begin reading simple books that contain words they can read on their own using the rules of the alphabetic principle. These decodable texts have a high percentage of words that follow common alphabetic principle rules. Students can practice reading these books to build their reading fluency, which helps them focus their attention on understanding the meaning of the text.

Many common words such as "was," "said" and "of" are irregular words-i.e., they do not follow common alphabetic principle rules. The most common irregular words should be taught early in reading development so that students will be able to read more expanded and interesting texts that are otherwise highly decodable.

Infographics

Suggested Citation

Baker, S.K., Santiago, R.T., Masser, J., Nelson, N.J., & Turtura, J. (2018). The Alphabetic Principle: From Phonological Awareness to Reading Words. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org.

References

Carnine, D., Silbert, J., & Kame'enui, E. J. (1997). Direct instruction reading. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.

Ehri, L. C. (1991). Development of the ability to read words. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2), 383-417. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Harn, B., Simmons, D. C., & Kame'enui, E. J. (2003). Institute on Beginning Reading II: Enhancing alphabetic principle instruction in core reading instruction [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://oregonreadingfirst.uoregon.edu/downloads/instruction/big_five/enh...

Liberman, I. Y., & Liberman, A. M. (1990). Whole language vs. code emphasis: Underlying assumptions and their implications for reading instruction. Annals of Dyslexia, 40(1), 51-76. doi:10.1007/bf02648140

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Retrieved from http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/smallbook.htm

Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4), 360-407. doi:10.1598/rrq.21.4.1

Wagner, R. K., & Torgesen, J. K. (1987). The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101(2), 192-212. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.101.2.192

Abstract

The alphabetic principle is a critical skill that involves connecting letters with their sounds to read and write. Learning and applying the alphabetic principle takes time and is difficult for most children. Explicit phonics instruction and extensive practice are important when teaching children to learn the alphabetic principle.

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The Alphabetic Principle: From Phonological Awareness to Reading Words

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What Is The Alphabetic Principle? Connecting letters with their sounds to read and write is called the "alphabetic principle." For example, a child who knows that the written letter "m" makes the /mmm/ sound is demonstrating the alphabetic principle. Letters in words tell us how to correctly "sound out" (i.e., read) and write words.

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A Matter of Talk: Nonie Lesaux's '8 for 8'

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Academic Talk: A Key to Literacy by Nonie Leseaux

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Academic Talk: A Key to Literacy by Nonie Leseaux