Reading Fluency and Students with Learning Disabilities: the Relationship to Test Accomodations

Abstract

 Extended time on high stakes testing is the most sought out accommodation for individuals with learning disabilities. This accommodation is necessary for many individuals with learning disabilities for a variety of reasons, but often for individuals who have ongoing difficulties with reading fluency. For many students with reading based learning disabilities, the need for extended time exists because of the difficulty in training individuals to read fluently. Reading fluency training is considered an evidence based procedure necessary for the development of reading skills by the National Reading Panel. However, most of the evidence on which this finding is based consists of single subject, evaluative, and other non-empirical studies. This article presents a review of the literature focusing on reading fluency intervention studies that utilized empirical research methodology. After a thorough review of the research we found seven studies which met our criteria. This article reviews those studies. Effect sizes were computed for all outcome data so that comparisons of effectiveness could be made. Our discussion highlights important commonalities and differences among these studies as well as highlighting the need for more empirically sound research in this area especially as it impacts the need for accommodations for high stakes testing.