Suzi Cottrell
Michael F. Shaughnessy
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico

1. How and why was the Institute for Reading Research founded?

Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Institute for Reading Research in Dallas was founded after Texas Instruments provided funds for an endowed chair in reading. In 2003, I joined SMU from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas - Houston Medical School. Primarily I have structured the Institute to develop, through scientific-based research, special curricula, instructional tools, and teacher support methods to address struggling readers in grades kindergarten through third grade. If you look at the test results from the last Nation's Report Card, nearly 40 percent of American children struggle with reading. The early school years are the crucial times to intervene with these children; this is why we focus on Kindergarten to 3 rd grade. Currently, we have four large-scale research projects in several schools and cities, funded with more than $16 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and from state sources as well.

2. With conventional wisdom among educators that children with mental retardation cannot learn to read, why did the Institute for Reading Research decide to conduct this study to prove otherwise?

Conventional wisdom means that the beliefs are untested. We don't actually know what children with mental retardation are capable of achieving in terms of reading. Our research has repeatedly demonstrated in various research projects that other difficult to teach children such as children with dyslexia, can be taught to read very well. We believe it time to see what possible for children with mental retardation as well.

3. How will you be applying what is known about teaching reading to children with written language difficulties to children with mild or moderate mental retardation?

The study with children with mental retardation is called Project Maximize because we want to boost their reading skills. The U.S. Department of Education has given us a $3 million grant to conduct the four-year study. We are in 10 Fort Worth schools with 150 children participating. We will be using curriculum and methods that have a long track history of effectiveness with other hard to teach population.

4. What are some of the techniques used to teach these children to read?

We are providing a comprehensive reading intervention designed for beginning, struggling readers that "scaffolds" elements of tasks that are initially beyond the learner's capability, permitting the learner to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within their range of competence. The key is early intervention, pacing, and patience.

For example, in a typical lesson, the students practice letter-sound correspondences for previously taught letters, practice writing these letters, and learn the sound of a new letter that is chosen because it is visually and auditorially dissimilar to other recently presented letter-sound correspondences. Also, as more and more alphabetic elements are mastered and students learn to deal with greater amounts of irregularity within words, the text becomes increasingly more difficult and more natural even though it is technically decodable. Likewise, learning comprehension includes explicit instruction in sequencing, predicting and checking predictions, story grammar, identifying prior knowledge, and identifying main ideas.

Also, lessons are delivered in a rapid-fire manner in which there is constant exchange between the instructor and students. In a typical routine, the teacher asks all students to respond to letters, words, or text in unison, followed by "individual turns" where each child is able to demonstrate their personal ownership of the content. By changing activities frequently, children with short attention spans appear to be able to stay focused on the task at hand. Finally, explicit teaching routines are an important part of this reading intervention.

Teachers follow a highly detailed, prescriptive lesson plan that fully explicates each aspect of each activity.

5. What evidence do you have that it will work?

In Project Maximize, we base our hypotheses on the success seen with these methods with other hard to teach populations including children with sever learning disabilities and dyslexia, and work with struggling English language learners.

6. What is the duration of this study?

We will follow one group of children across four years.

7. Will you be comparing results with the University of North Carolina and Georgia State University, since they are conducting similar studies?

Each study is looking at different questions and different levels of mental retardation. So I don't think comparisons really make that much sense.

8. What implications will this study have in terms of the No Child Left Behind Act?

We will know if all children, as described in NCLB, really means all children, or all children who are not Mentally Retarded.

9. How is the Language Enrichment Activities Program helping preschool teachers prepare young students to learn to read?

In our model demonstration project, LEAP serves as one component. It is the core curriculum that has been selected by Head Start of Greater Dallas. Our focus is on providing coaching to these teachers so that they can more effectively use the tools that are in their classrooms.

10. What is Learning Therapy?

Learning Therapy is a term used to describe a type of instruction delivered to children with dyslexia. SMU's Institute for Reading Research and the Learning Therapy program are two separate entities. The Learning Therapy program also is in the School of Education and Human Development, but it's a 22-hour graduate certificate program for people who want to become certified to teach children with learning disabilities.

11. Could you describe the program requirements for a certificate in Learning Therapy?

No, but Karen Vickery, director of SMU's Learning Therapy Program, could explain it much better than me. She can be reached at 214-768-3430.

The Institute does not run the Learning therapy program.

12.What is the goal of the Master Reading Teacher program?

To prepare teachers who truly understand how to deliver scientifically based reading instruction in the public schools, how to mentor their colleagues in delivering higher quality instruction, and to assist, and how to assist districts in making better curricular choices.

13) When you discuss " reading " in terms of the mentally retarded, do you mean that they can learn to decode words, make inferences, read with comprehension, and recall facts from what they have read?

Yes, all of the above.

14) Are you talking about borderline mental retardation (70-80 I.Q.) or mild mental retardation (55-70)?

Actually both of these groups, as well as children who fit into the moderate range.

15) What types of Intelligence Tests were given, and by whom were they administered? 

We use Wechsler scores. Usually the school has already administered this, but we follow up with the short scale (WASI) just as confirmation.

16) What question have we neglected to ask?

You haven't asked us about our scale up work. The purpose of this work is to examine the research to practice gap. We've shown previously that we can reduce the incidence to reading disabilities down to .02% of the general population, and that brain functioning of theses children can be totally normalized. However, the gap between what we've shown in possible in a small, well controlled study, and what actually happens in schools is vastly different. IN Project Scale up, we are working with 58 schools in the Dallas, Ft Worth and Austin Areas to examine the process of what happens in schools as they try to implement the same interventions shown to be so effective.