Abstract
Educational equality is a critical component of social justice. Longstanding disparities in educational achievement and access to effective instruction have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This manuscript replicates and extends analyses of a behaviorally informed model of literacy instruction, Fit Lite®, pioneered by Sawyer et al. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 14, 623–630, (2020), which demonstrated significant improvements in reading proficiency among a cohort of marginalized students. The Fit Lite® model is a brief, intensive literacy intervention that incorporates empirically validated techniques, including precision teaching, repeated reinforced practice, and frequent progress monitoring with standardized assessments of oral reading skills. The current study includes a stronger demonstration of experimental control and involved 18 second-grade students in a rural Title-1 elementary school. The current findings verify the replicability of the model, with both iterations producing growth in oral reading skills greater than two percentile ranks per hour of instruction, based on US national normative assessment data. The potential for Fit Lite® and similar intervention packages for addressing educational inequity are discussed.
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Data availability
Student outcome data supporting the outcomes of this study are available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of the participating elementary school. Normative ranking datasets utilized are available from Aimsweb®, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study and are not publicly available.
Notes
Although we are confident in the accuracy of this cost estimate, it should be noted that total costs were not codified in a contract with the participating elementary school. The school was not asked to pay for the current demonstration project, which was funded by the authors’ organization.
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Funding was provided by the authors’ organization, which also owns the rights to the Fit Lite® model.
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Newsome, D., Miller, S.A., Newsome, K. et al. Charting the Path to Equality in Literacy Instruction: A Precision Teaching Project in a Title-1 School. Behav. Soc. Iss. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-023-00140-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42822-023-00140-7