Improving Reading Comprehension for High School Students With Disabilities: Effects for Comprehension and School Retention

The authors examine the results for students with disabilities from a 2-year randomized controlled trial with students identified in ninth grade and followed through 10th grade in their allotted condition group. Prior to ninth grade, students with disabilities who met criteria for low reading comprehension (i.e., through failure on the state accountability test) were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions-reading without dropout prevention, reading with dropout prevention, dropout prevention without reading-or a business-as-usual condition. Students with disabilities in the reading treatments demonstrated significant gains on reading comprehension (Hedges's g = .44) compared to students with disabilities in the business-as-usual and dropout-prevention-without-reading conditions. Results support extensive (2-year) interventions in reading for high school students with disabilities.