Austin Independent School District's Texas Literacy Initiative (TLI) was a grant-funded effort to improve students' school readiness and success in the areas of language and literacy in the Johnson, Lanier, and Travis vertical teams of schools. This report summarizes results from a survey sent to TLI teachers in Fall 2013 to obtain their feedback…

This article presents an interview with Janet W. Lerner, professor emerita of special education at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Lerner also serves as an adjunct professor in the Professional Assistant Center for Education (PACE) for Young Adults with Multiple Learning Disabilities at National Louis University and as…

This article describes the development and initial implementation of the Comprehension and Learning from Text Survey (CoLTS), an instrument designed to assess teachers' specialized knowledge for comprehension instruction in the context of discussion. CoLTS is a paper-and-pencil test that engages teachers in analyzing a text to identify the most…

Classroom-based assessments are important resources for teachers and reading specialists for informing instruction. Their benefits can be enhanced by designing measures that assess more than single skills, that follow formative assessment principles, and that involve multimodal formats and student responses. Because of the diversity in K-6…

The summer before the 2003-2004 year, the author was contacted by a district director of exceptional student education (ESE) about participating in a new program. She described it as a problem-solving method that would help them identify and provide interventions for K-2 students who were not making adequate progress in reading. The district would…

The time-honored children's story "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" is a prime example of someone having the kind of day people would like to avoid. Having a bad day can happen to anyone--even a dedicated literacy coach. An important component of coaching is building collaborative working relationships between the coach…

Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI) is widely understood as representing a multilevel framework that integrates assessment and instruction to provide strong early intervention and valid methods of disability identification. There are currently many approaches to RTI, which are creating confusion among educators as they try to conceptualize,…

Describes the varied teaching activities of a reading specialist. Discusses how her role is already what she would like it to be and what she would like to change. (SR)

Describes the reading specialist's role in the Collaborative Literacy Intervention Project (CLIP) of the Tempe (Arizona) School District. (SR)

Poor reading ability is associated with numerous negative consequences. School psychologists should provide teachers with resources and support to improve student reading ability and prevent these negative outcomes. This paper offers a guide for school psychologists to use in the consultation process when working with teachers to address students'…

Discusses a method to motivate low level students in which a reading specialist attended class regularly as a "student." By questioning the teacher, comparing notes with students, and acting as a role model, the reading specialist helped these students improve their grades, their class behavior, and increase their self-esteem. (GEA)

Literacy coaching is a very hot topic (Cassidy & Cassidy, 2007) that has been spurred on by two opposite belief systems. On one hand, the Reading First schools can receive federal funding to hire coaches to raise test scores. This has led some teachers to characterize coaches as "test-prep enforcers." On the other hand, Bean, Swan…

Reading teachers should be flexible enough to adapt to varying situations that they encounter when they are asked to develop school-wide reading programs. Under ideal conditions, the faculty and administration are enthusiastic volunteers who accomplish the bulk of the reading program's objectives in their classrooms, allowing the reading…

Issued twice yearly, this journal focuses on materials of interest to teachers of reading at the college level. The five articles in this issue deal with the following topics: basic skills instruction, judging the success of college reading programs, the effect of copying or paraphrasing structurally-cued topic sentences on passage comprehension,…

Reading specialists in several San Diego schools assist both in providing tutoring to students and coach peers, a dual role that has helped to create and sustain schoolwide improvements in literacy. In just a few years, these high-poverty schools have doubled the number of 2nd graders reading at grade level.