Supporting Young Struggling Readers at Success for All Schools in the United States and the Netherlands - Management Assignment Help

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Abstract Success for All, a multi-tiered school reform program, has its origins in the US and has recently expanded to the Netherlands. Using a multiple case study approach, we investigated similarities and differences in the way struggling readers are supported at two Success for All schools in the US and two in the Netherlands. Firstand second-grade teachers and other staff members involved in the implementation of Success for All and the support of struggling readers were interviewed. We concluded that American and Dutch interviewees agreed on the benefits of Success for All for struggling readers, such as the engaging whole-class lessons and the possibility to offer tutoring. Furthermore, in both countries a tension was observed between the scriptedness of Success for All and the need for flexibility in the support of struggling readers. Regarding differences, we observed that both contextual and cultural factors led to variations in the way struggling readers are supported. Keywords Struggling readers, students at risk, response to intervention, Success for All, school reform, multiple case study, qualitative research, comparative education Introduction For many students with special educational needs (SEN), difficulties in reading have been the primary reason for their referral to special education services (Reschly, 2010). Large differences in reading skills are already visible in the early grades of elementary school (Jepma, 2003; Snow et al., 1998). To prevent the gap between poor and skilled readers from widening, known as the Matthew effect in reading (Stanovich, 1986), students at risk need systematic and intensive instruction, starting early (Hagans and Good, 2013; Reschly, 2010). Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) and response to intervention models are useful in this regard, proposing an intensified Corresponding author: Mariëtte Hingstman, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Groningen, Grote Rozenstraat 3, 9712 TG Groningen, The Netherlands. Email: m.hingstman@rug.nl 975984 RCI0010.1177/1745499920975984Research in Comparative and International EducationHingstman et al. research-article2020 Article Hingstman et al. 23 degree of instruction for students who do not benefit enough from Tier 1 whole-class instruction. Generally, one-to-small group tutoring and technology-supported instruction are classified as Tier 2 strategies, and one-to-one tutoring as Tier 3. Special education services are often classified as Tier 4 (Fuchs and Fuchs, 2006). A recent, rigorous review of (mostly American) interventions for struggling readers in elementary schools by Inns et al. (2019) showed positive effects of both oneto-small group tutoring and one-to-one tutoring. Struggling readers are best benefitted when Tier 2 and 3 interventions are incorporated into a whole-class or whole-school program that also includes evidence-based strategies at Tier 1 (Inns et al., 2019). Success for All Success for All (SfA) is an extensively researched whole-school program that includes aligned Tier 1, 2 and 3 strategies (Slavin et al., 2009). The aim of SfA is to ensure that every child, regardless of background, acquires adequate reading skills so he/she experiences success and becomes a motivated learner. SfA was originally developed for high-poverty/Title 1 elementary schools in Baltimore in the late 1980s and was intended to serve as an effective, replicable way of providing different types of support in a coherent manner (Slavin and Madden, 2013).

Since then the number of schools working with SfA has increased considerably, and currently SfA is being used in approximately 1000 schools across the US and 200 schools across the UK. SfA includes evidence-based reading curricula (Reading Roots and Reading Wings), cooperative learning, flexible regrouping by reading performance level, tutoring, frequent assessment, solutions teams that concentrate on topics such as attendance, and a program for social emotional learning called Getting Along Together. Teachers at SfA schools are supported in their professional development by a facilitator, who is responsible for supervising the implementation of SfA in the school (Slavin et al., 2009). SfA appears to be especially effective in improving the reading performance of initially lowachieving students (Quint et al., 2015). Borman and Hewes (2002) found that students in SfA schools spent fewer years enrolled in special education, completed eighth grade at a younger age, and experienced a lower number of retentions than students at control schools. Slavin et al. (2011) synthesized nine experimental and quasi-experimental studies on SfA and reported a mean effect size (standardized mean difference) of +0.55 on reading outcomes of students in the lowest-performing segments of their classes. Although several studies demonstrated strong effects of SfA on student performance, evaluating SfA is often complicated because of implementation issues. Klingner et al. (2006) observed that schools experienced problems with regrouping, tutoring, and the scripted nature of SfA. The study of the Education Endowment Foundation (2017) in the UK demonstrated large differences between schools, for example regarding the amount of staff available, that have impacted SfA implementation.

Teachers expressed mixed opinions about the possibilities to differentiate the curriculum in such a way that the needs of all children were met. As deficits in reading/language, especially among students with low socioeconomic backgrounds, are persistent in the Netherlands too (Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2019; Smeets et al., 2019), the University of Groningen took the initiative to introduce SfA step-wise in the Dutch context. In the first phase of the research and development (R&D) project (2015–2018), six elementary schools participated. First, the Reading Roots curriculum for Grade 1 was developed, as an addition to the widely used phonics curriculum Veilig Leren Lezen (Zwijsen, 2003). The main things Reading Roots adds to Veilig Leren Lezen are the emphasis on cooperative learning and the use of “shared stories”: short stories with sentences in large letters to be read by the child and smaller letters to be read by an adult. These stories are taken home after reading them in class. After developing Reading Roots, the Reading Wings curriculum was developed for students in the higher grades of elementary education. Reading Wings is designed as a comprehensive 24 Research in Comparative & International Education 16(1) curriculum, which can fully replace previously used programs for reading/language instruction in the higher grades. Because of the limited number of classes and teachers that participated in the first phase of the project, flexible regrouping by reading level was not yet possible in most participating schools.

To be able to provide differentiated instruction, additional materials were developed. Teachers in Grade 1 could choose to read “light” (shortened and simplified) versions of the shared stories with their low-achievers and to give more challenging assignments to their highachievers. In the higher grades, opportunities for extended instruction or enrichment activities were scheduled in the last week of every seven- or eight-week instructional cycle. Furthermore, Reading Wings teachers could divide their students into a high- and a low-performance subgroup, because materials for two different within-grade levels were developed. SfA’s solutions teams and the Getting Along Together program were not yet introduced in the Dutch version of SfA. The development of these components was not prioritized because schools were satisfied with the programs and procedures to address non-academic issues that were already in place. After three years of implementation of SfA in the Netherlands, positive effects on the text reading skills and oral language skills of first graders were observed.

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