MCPER researchers have been awarded a 5-year, $3.3 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences to examine the efficacy of a reading intervention for students with disabilities.
The project, Promoting Comprehension and Content Acquisition for Students With Disabilities, targets middle school students with learning disabilities in a study of the previously developed PACT intervention. Approximately 16,000 students, including an estimated 1,280 students with disabilities, will participate in the study implemented by social studies teachers at 32 urban and suburban middle schools in Texas and Tennessee.
PACT was developed and tested for efficacy with middle school students in social studies classrooms as part of a previously funded Institute of Education Sciences project. Data from that study suggest the intervention is promising for learners with disabilities, but it has yet to be rigorously tested with this group of students.
“We are grateful and excited for this opportunity to build on our previous PACT research,” said Leticia Martinez, co-principal investigator of the project and director of MCPER’s Language for Learning Institute. “There is a need to identify evidence-based practices to assist teachers in improving outcomes for our students with disabilities, considering how many of these students receive instruction in the general education classroom, and we intend for our findings to contribute to this knowledge base.”
MCPER Executive Director Sharon Vaughn is the principal investigator of the project. In addition to Martinez, MCPER Associate Director Greg Roberts and Jeanne Wanzek of Vanderbilt University are co-principal investigators.