Lillian Michaels

Assignment 2e Interpret a Progress Monitoring Report

SPED 750-99 Professor Dr. York
June 20, 2015

Tommy's initial functioning level in comparison to the national sample:

Testing on Aug. 22 indicated Tommys initial functioning level placed him in the 25 th percentile,
meaning that he scored as well or better than 25% of the students tested. The results from the
national sample indicated a mean score of 64 with a standard deviation of 37. Tommys raw score of
35 places him less than 1 standard deviation below the mean, so he is well within the normal curve
for this test.

Additional interventions that were tried

The Tier 3 instruction in place in August involved 30 minutes additional instruction time with the
classroom teacher and 30 minutes with the Title 1 instructor. This led to almost no improvement over
the 5 weeks it was in place. Intervention 1, beginning on Sept. 26, may have entailed a targeted
intervention such as sight word drills, where Tommy was given several sentences, each with a word
missing, and asked to choose the word from the word bank which would correctly complete the
sentence. This intervention resulted in some improvement during the 9 weeks in which it was in
place. However, the improvement of .62 words read correct per week was significantly less than the
goal of 1.94 which was set in August. Intervention 2, beginning November 28, may have involved
something more specific, such as Error Correction and Word Drill Techniques. The Savvy

Teachers
Guide:
Reading
Interventions
That
Work
Jim
Wright
(
www.interventioncentral.org) These are techniques designed for new and developing
readers with a specific goal of reducing reading word errors. This intervention resulted in a marked
improvement of 2.3 words read correct per week.

Tommy's progress through the semester and what happened that may have impacted his
progress
Through the semester, Tommy has improved from a raw score of 35 to a raw score of 53. While his
raw score of 53 on 12/26 places him below the 25 th percentile at that point, his current rate of
improvement puts him on track to be in roughly the 37 th percentile at the end of the school year.
Assuming the rate of improvement continues, Tommy would be significantly less than 1 standard
deviation below the mean on the Spring test. The more targeted interventions seem to have had a
measurable impact on Tommys reading scores. He is better able to recognize words which he
struggled with, so his accuracy has increased rapidly during the last 5 weeks.

Tommy's progress related to the goal that was set for him.

At this time Tommy is exceeding the target rate of improvement which was set in August by a
substantial measure. Even though his raw score has fallen to greater than 1 standard deviation
below the mean for the winter test, the recent increase in his rate of improvement is encouraging.

Next steps--additional interventions that might be tried, special education evaluation, etc.
It appears that Tommy is making sufficient progress toward his goals at this time, so I would not
recommend a special education evaluation right now. If his progress plateaus at some point, then
additional interventions may be needed, such as those described in Vadasy, P. F., Sanders, E.

A., & Peyton, J. A. (2005). Relative effectiveness of reading practice or word

level instruction in supplemental tutoring: How text matters. Journal of Learning
Disabilities, 38, 364380. These interventions involve work on decoding and text reading with
reading practice groups and word study groups. If improvement stops or Tommy no longer appears
to be responding to the interventions, a special education evaluation might be in order.