Andrea Schwartz, M.A., CCC-SLP Speech/Language Therapist
New York, NY

In June of this year, I was retained by Drake Bennett Summer Schools to administer before and after assessments of their summer school students. I have no other commercial relationship with Drake Bennett, and I have done all of the testing myself, without involvement from Drake Bennett staff.

Reading is fundamental. There is no skill more central to success in our current society. Yet we are all painfully aware of the high numbers of children who are struggling to demonstrate basic reading proficiency, as measured by state and local assessments, and the long-term challenges for those individuals as well as for our society as a whole. The “reading wars,” with advocates of a “whole language” approach on one side and a phonics-based approach on the other, rage on as educators and politicians argue about the best approach to teaching reading. This occurs in spite of the findings of the National Reading Panel which outlined the five major components of reading instruction. These are: phonemic awareness (recognizing and manipulating sounds in words); phonics (attaching sounds to letters); fluency (reading accurately and smoothly); vocabulary; and text comprehension. And, as “the proof is in the pudding,” a reading program is only as good as the reading success of the children it instructs. So programs have to demonstrate their worth. Drake Bennett Summer School employs a curriculum that meets the requirements of the National Reading Panel. Furthermore, its students demonstrate progress as measured by Aimsweb, the leading progress-monitoring tool used today.

I employed two of Aimsweb’s assessment tools: the Test of Early Literacy (TEL) for children in grades K and 1 (and older children who are struggling readers) and Reading-Curriculum Based Measurement (R-CBM). Assessment is done through one-minute, timed tasks. The TEL is comprised of four skill-based assessments that measure mastery of early reading measures: Letter Name Fluency; Letter Sound Fluency; Phoneme Segmentation Fluency; and Nonsense Word Fluency. The R-CBM is comprised of brief, grade-level reading passages. R-CBM is a particularly powerful measure that uses oral reading fluency as an indicator of global reading proficiency. Just as a doctor measures your temperature, weight, and blood pressure to monitor your overall health, R-CBM is a proven, accurate measure of reading ability. Furthermore, Aimsweb national norms data now comprise the results from over 30,000 students per grade, nationwide.

Two notes before looking at the Drake Bennett data: First, any reference to a child’s grade is based on the grade they last completed. This is for two reasons. There is no “summer” aimsweb data. So all Drake Bennett children’s scores were compared to scores of children from the spring of the school year just completed. In addition, some of the Drake Bennett students are at risk of being held back in last year’s grade, so it is not clear what grade they will be in come fall. Second, whenever possible, children were tested on grade-level reading passages. If they were unable to read a sentence from a grade-level passage (>10 words correct), they were given an easier passage.

Let’s take a look at the results from pre- and post-testing of the Drake Bennett July students. “Expected ROI (rate of improvement)” is the demonstrated ROI per week from students nationwide at the same percentile. “Actual ROI” is the performance of the Drake Bennett student. Looking at the kindergarteners, you can see that kindergarteners in general progress at the rate of about one letter/sound/per week. Nationally, children at the lower end, have lower ROIs which reflect their slower rates of improvement. At Drake Bennett in July, five of the six kindergarteners improved at a rate faster than their peers, some quite significantly so. If we focus specifically on the Nonsense Word Fluency subtest (the closest measure to actual reading,) for a student like Anna, her change (from 20 sounds correct to 47) moved her from the 13th percentile to the 66th percentile for kindergarteners nationwide. Mohammad moved from the 35th to 60th percentile.

Overall, the CBM-R is the most accurate measure of reading progress. Looking at the six 1st graders, three children surpassed the expected ROI for children at their level. Of the remaining three children, one made no progress, one moved from <10 words correct to exactly 10 words correct (there is no ROI for < 10) and one child was not administered the R-CBM. Two of these three children still demonstrated some progress in their TEL scores.

Looking at the 2nd and 3rd graders, four of seven children improved at a rate faster than their percentile-matched peers. As for the three children who made minimal to no progress, we do see some progress in their TEL scores, suggesting that these student’s foundational skills are developing and need even more intensive work.

In the older group, 4th-6th graders, ten of twelve children really made outstanding progress, demonstrating ROIs that surpass their national peers. It is these ROIs that are necessary to close the gap between these readers and their grade-level peers. Studies show that one of the problems with traditional school-based pull-out services is that students who are, e.g., reading two years below grade level make progress but, of course, so do their peers, and they remain reading two years below grade level. Only programs that can demonstrate higher than average rates of improvement have the potential to not just maintain these students but to raise their reading levels to the level of their grade-level peers. If students could continue this level of progress throughout the school year, they would have a chance of really catching up.

Andrea Schwartz, M.A., CCC-SLP Speech/Language Therapist
New York, NY

In June of this year I was retained by Drake Bennett Summer Schools to administer before and after assessments of their summer school students. I have no other commercial relationship with Drake Bennett, and I have done all of the testing myself, without involvement from Drake Bennett staff.

Drake Bennett Summer School is a full-day summer school for elementary grade students. Students are grouped homogeneously for Orton-Gillingham based reading instruction or enrichment (direct instruction in Greek/Latin prefixes and suffixes along with sentence and text-level comprehension strategies) for 60 minutes, 5 days/week. In addition, students are grouped heterogeneously for an additional period of drama. All students attend classes in math, science, art, and dance. Especially strong math students receive instruction in geography.

Each student’s reading level is assessed at the beginning and end of the month using two Aimsweb tools: the Test of Early Literacy (TEL) and Reading-Curriculum Based Measurement (R-CBM). Assessment is done through one-minute, timed tasks. The TEL is comprised of four skill-based assessments that measure mastery of early reading measures: Letter Name Fluency; Letter Sound Fluency; Phoneme Segmentation Fluency; and Nonsense Word Fluency. Due to the high number of students at Drake Bennett with dyslexia, all students are administered the TEL even though it is normed only on students in grade K and 1. Given the short duration of the program, this permits us to see if students make progress in basic reading subskills apart from text reading.

The R-CBM is comprised of brief, grade-level reading passages. R-CBM is a particularly powerful measure that uses oral reading fluency as an indicator of global reading proficiency. Just as a doctor measures your temperature, weight, and blood pressure to monitor your overall health, R-CBM is a proven, accurate measure of reading ability. Aimsweb national norms data comprises the results from over 30,000 students per grade, nationwide. Norms include both ROI (rate of improvement expressed as number of words/week) and percentile ranks. As expected, nationally, children at the lower end have lower ROIs which reflects their slower rates of improvement. As a rule of thumb, children in grade 1 at the 50th and 75th %ile increase their reading rate by 1.5 and 1.8 words/week, respectively. Children in grades 2 through 5, at both the 50th and 75th %ile, increase their reading rate by about 1 word/week.

Two notes before looking at the Drake Bennett data: First, any reference to a child’s grade is based on the grade they last completed. This is for two reasons. There is no “summer” aimsweb data. So all Drake Bennett children’s scores were compared to scores of children from the spring of the school year just completed. In addition, some of the Drake Bennett students are at risk of being held back in last year’s grade, so it is not clear what grade they will be in come fall.

In July 2014, of the 3 kindergarten students, one left for a family trip before post-testing, one showed no change in his reading, and one improved quite significantly, demonstrating an ROI of 5.5 on Nonsense Word Fluency and an ROI of 4 on CBM-R.

Overall, the CBM-R is the most accurate measure of reading progress. Looking at the seven 1st graders, two children surpassed the expected ROI for children at their level, and increased their reading rate by 3 and 4.25 words/week. The remaining five children showed no improvement in their text reading; however 4 of those 5 demonstrated significant improvement in their TEL scores and especially their Nonword Reading Fluency.

Thirteen 2nd graders participated in the July program; however, 4 were not present for post-testing. Of the remaining 9 students, 7 improved at a faster rate than national peers, some quite significantly so with ROIs of 5, 6, 7.25 and 8.25. Of the remaining two children who made minimal to no progress in their text reading, both demonstrated tremendous improvement in their Nonword Fluency suggesting that these student’s foundational skills are developing and need even more intensive work.

Four 3rd graders were present for post-testing. Three demonstrated ROIs that outpaced their expected rate. The fourth demonstrated an ROI of 1, but demonstrated excellent improvement in Nonword Fluency. Each of the eight 4th and 5th graders earned ROIs that outpaced their national peers, improving by anywhere from an additional 2-7 words/week.

High ROIs are necessary to advance slow readers. According to Aimsweb, performance at the 45th %ile on national norms indicates that the student is 80% likely to meet proficiency standards on a typical state test. Only programs that can demonstrate higher than average rates of improvement have the potential to not just maintain struggling students but to raise their reading levels to the level of their grade-level peers. If students could continue this level of progress throughout the school year, they would have a chance of really catching up.

Andrea Schwartz, M.A., CCC-SLP Speech/Language Therapist
New York, NY

In June of this year, I was retained by Drake Bennett Summer Schools to administer before and after assessments of their summer school students. I have no other commercial relationship with Drake Bennett. All testing was done by me.

Drake Bennett Summer School is a full-day summer school for elementary grade students. Students are grouped homogeneously for Orton-Gillingham-based reading instruction for 60 minutes, 5 days/week. In addition, students are grouped heterogeneously for an additional period of drama. All students attend classes in math, science, art, and dance.

Each student’s reading level is assessed at the beginning and end of the month using two Aimsweb tools: the Test of Early Literacy (TEL) and Reading-Curriculum Based Measurement (R-CBM). Assessment is done through one-minute, timed tasks. The TEL is comprised of four skill-based assessments that measure mastery of early reading measures: Letter Name Fluency; Letter Sound Fluency; Phoneme Segmentation Fluency; and Nonsense Word Fluency. Due to the high number of students at Drake Bennett with dyslexia, all students are administered the TEL even though it is normed only on students in grade K, 1, and 2. Given the short duration of the program, this permits us to see if students make progress in basic reading subskills apart from text reading.

The R-CBM is comprised of brief, grade-level reading passages. R-CBM is a particularly powerful measure that uses oral reading fluency as an indicator of global reading proficiency. Just as a doctor measures your temperature, weight, and blood pressure to monitor your overall health, R-CBM is a proven, accurate measure of reading ability. Aimsweb national norms data comprises the results from over 30,000 students per grade, nationwide. Norms include both ROI (rate of improvement expressed as number of words/week) and percentile ranks. As expected, nationally, children at the lower end have lower ROIs which reflects their slower rates of improvement. As a rule of thumb, children in grade 1 at the 50th and 75th %ile increase their reading rate by 1.5 and 1.8 words/week, respectively. Children in grades 2 through 5, at both the 50th and 75th %ile, increase their reading rate by about 1 word/week.

Two notes before looking at the Drake Bennett data: First, any reference to a child’s grade is based on the grade they last completed. This is for two reasons. There is no “summer” aimsweb data. So all Drake Bennett children’s scores were compared to scores of children from the spring of the school year just completed. In addition, some of the Drake Bennett students are at risk of being held back in last year’s grade, so it is not clear what grade they will be in come fall.

In July 2015, all kindergarteners showed significant growth in their NWF scores, surpassing their expected ROIs by a factor of at least 3. For one student, this did not yet translate into improved reading of text passages (CBM-R); for the other 2 students, their CBM-R ROIs were 6.75 and 9.

Overall, the CBM-R is the most accurate measure of reading progress. Of the 5 first- graders, three children surpassed the expected ROI for children at their level by a factor of at least 2. The remaining two children showed no-minimal improvement in their text reading; however both demonstrated significant improvement in their Nonword Reading Fluency, achieving ROIs of 4.25 and 5.25 words/week.

Five 2nd graders completed the July program. Three improved at a faster rate than their national peers by a factor of at least 2. One of these children achieved an ROI of 6. Of the remaining two children who made minimal to no progress in their text reading, both demonstrated tremendous improvement in their Nonword Fluency (surpassing their expected ROI by a factor of 10) suggesting that these student’s foundational skills are developing and need even more intensive work.

Eight 3rd graders were present for post-testing. Seven demonstrated ROIs that outpaced their expected rate, six of them by a factor of more than 4. One student, already in the 90th %ile for reading, was quite uncomfortable speaking due to a painful canker sore...she did not demonstrate any change in reading rate.

Five 4th graders completed the program. Three demonstrated ROIs of greater than 4 on the CBM-R. Of the two students who did not show growth, one achieved an ROI of 5.2 on the NWF task and one an ROI of 15.5 on the NWF task. The one 7th grader who completed the program achieved an ROI of 2.0 on the CBM-R, surpassing the ROI of his age- and performance-level peers of 0.64.)

High ROIs are necessary to advance slow readers. According to Aimsweb, performance at the 45th %ile on national norms indicates that the student is 80% likely to meet proficiency standards on a typical state test. Only programs that can demonstrate higher than average rates of improvement have the potential to not just maintain struggling students but to raise their reading levels to the level of their grade-level peers...to move them from one quartile to the next. If students could continue this level of progress throughout the school year, they would have a chance of really catching up.

Andrea Schwartz, M.A., CCC-SLP Speech/Language Therapist
New York, NY

In June of this year I was retained by Drake Bennett Summer Schools to administer before and after assessments of their summer school students. I have no other commercial relationship with Drake Bennett.

Drake Bennett Summer School is a full-day summer school for elementary grade students. Students are grouped homogeneously for Orton-Gillingham-based reading instruction for 60 minutes, 5 days/week. In addition, students are grouped heterogeneously for an additional period of drama. All students attend classes in math, science, art, and dance.

Each student’s reading level is assessed at the beginning and end of the month using two Aimsweb tools: the Test of Early Literacy (TEL) and Reading-Curriculum Based Measurement (R-CBM). Assessment is done through one-minute, timed tasks. The TEL is comprised of four skill-based assessments that measure mastery of early reading measures: Letter Name Fluency (LNF); Letter Sound Fluency (LSF); Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF); and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF). Due to the high number of students at Drake Bennett with dyslexia, all students are administered the TEL even though it is normed only on students in grade K and 1. Given the short duration of the program, this permits us to see if students make progress in basic reading subskills apart from text reading.

The R-CBM is comprised of brief, grade-level reading passages. R-CBM is a particularly powerful measure that uses oral reading fluency as an indicator of global reading proficiency. Just as a doctor measures your temperature, weight, and blood pressure to monitor your overall health, R-CBM is a proven, accurate measure of reading ability. Aimsweb national norms data comprises the results from over 30,000 students per grade, nationwide. Norms include both ROI (rate of improvement expressed as number of words/week) and percentile ranks. As expected, nationally, children at the lower end have lower ROIs which reflects their slower rates of improvement. As a rule of thumb, children in grade 1 at the 50th and 75th %ile increase their reading rate by 1.5 and 1.8 words/week, respectively. Children in grades 2 through 5, at both the 50th and 75th %ile, increase their reading rate by about 1 word/week.

Two notes before looking at the Drake Bennett data: First, any reference to a child’s grade is based on the grade they last completed. This is for two reasons. There is no “summer” aimsweb data. So all Drake Bennett children’s scores were compared to scores of children from the spring of the school year just completed. In addition, some of the Drake Bennett students are at risk of being held back in last year’s grade, so it is not clear what grade they will be in come fall.

Two kindergarteners attended DrakeBennett in July. One child demonstrated very strong growth in all subtests of the TEL, most notably achieving ROIs of 11.6 in NWF and 4.6 in PSF. This child also increased his reading fluency in passage reading by 11 words per minute. The second student only demonstrated gains in PSF.

Overall, statistically, the CBM-R is the most accurate measure of reading progress. Seven first graders completed the program in July. One child achieved an ROI of 7.3, moving her from the 61st to 78th %ile in passage reading fluency. Two children surpassed their expected ROI by a factor of 2. Of the 4 children who did not demonstrate gains in their CBM-R, two demonstrated gains in their NWF, indicating growth in the subskill of segmenting and blending phonemes.

Four of the five 2nd graders who completed the July program surpassed their expected ROIs. One child achieved an ROI of 7.25 and moved from the 57th to 82nd %ile in passage reading words per minute. One child achieved an ROI of 5.6 and moved from the 42nd to 59th %ile in reading for students his age. Two children achieved ROIs of more than double their expected rate. One child did not surpass his expected ROI in CBM-R but made strong gains in both NWF and PSF, suggesting that his foundational skills are developing and need even more intensive work.

Two of the three 3rd graders demonstrated very strong growth in July, achieving ROIs of 7.75 and 6.75, moving from the 58th to 84th %ile and 25th to 48th %ile respectively. The third student just surpassed her expected ROI in CBM-R and remained at the 2nd %ile.

Five 4th graders completed the program in July. One student demonstrated such a drastic increase in his reading rate (104 to 180 words per minute) that he is assumed to have underperformed on his pretest. One student surpassed his expected ROI, yet hovered around the 2nd %ile. Three students did not achieve their expected ROI yet demonstrated growth in NWF as well as PSF.

One 6th grader attended in July. She surpassed her expected ROI and moved from the 45th %ile to the 51st %ile. She demonstrated gains in NWF and PSF as well.

High ROIs are necessary to advance slow readers. According to Aimsweb, performance at the 45th %ile on national norms indicates that the student is 80% likely to meet proficiency standards on a typical state test. Only programs that can demonstrate higher than average rates of improvement have the potential to not just maintain struggling students but to raise their reading levels to the level of their grade-level peers...to move them from one quartile to the next. If students could continue this level of progress throughout the school year, they would have a chance of really catching up.