Assessment and Intervention for Dyslexia with Dr. Clemens

[music] This is not your average school psychologist podcast. We are your hosts, Rachel Eisenberg, Laura Rutherford, Janna Sanders, and Lisa Thomas. [music] So today we are able to talk to Dr. Nathan Clemens and he spoke to us about dyslexia and other reading disabilities and how they're different and similar, or the same. He talked a lot about assessments for reading problems as well as interventions that we can try with kids who have reading disabilities. Yes, he said assessment and intervention you can't have one without the other. So I thought that was a good little theme from today's episode. He also gave a lot of great resources for practitioners, for teachers, for anybody who wants to learn a little bit more about evidence-based practices and what works without the maybe accessibility of the platform of databases and journal articles. And we of course had to talk about Philadelphia sports and Philadelphia sports fans. So hang on and listen to the end on that one. Yep, all right. Happy listening. All right, welcome to Nye Your Average School Psychologist Podcast. I'm Laura and I'm joined today by Janna. Hello. Our guest today is Dr. Nathan Clemens. Dr. Clemens is a professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Clemens studies reading difficulties in children and youth, particularly word reading difficulties for students in the early grades, including dyslexia and reading comprehension difficulties for students in later grades. His work is aimed at improving reading interventions, helping teachers make better use of assessment data to guide their instruction, and aligning evidence-based interventions with students unique learning needs. Dr. Clemens received his PhD in School Psychology from Lehigh University in 2009. He has over 60 publications in his leading several federal research grants studying interventions for struggling readers. Thank you for joining us today. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to join the hot podcast. Awesome. Well, we are going to start by asking you, how are you breaking beyond the barriers of the work traditionally occurring in the field of School Psychology? Well, I guess, you know, from a more apparent standpoint, I guess the fact that I'm in a Department of Special Education now, I received my degree in School Psychology from Lehigh University with lawyer Laura. Sorry. I were part of the same cohort, I think, or perhaps just maybe one year separated. The same cohort, that's right. But I got my degree in School Psychology from Lehigh University. I worked for about six years as an assistant professor in School Psychology program at Texas A&M University, and then it wasn't until 2016 when an opportunity arose here at the University of Texas at Austin to join a Department of Special Education. And it was something that was very attractive to me to join a Department of Special Education for a few reasons. I think number one, the program that Laura and I attended at Lehigh University was very closely aligned with a special education program at Lehigh. And so as part of that, we had courses with some of the leaders in special education, like Lee Kern and Ashtet-Tendra when she was there. And so we had significant exposure to the intervention side of things and not just the assessment perspective that you get traditionally from School Psychology. I also, my mentor at Lehigh University was Ed Shapiro and was always someone who believed very strongly and advocated and did this in his work, who worked to integrate assessment with intervention, the close connection between the two. You can't have one without the other and how important, considering the intervention was when you're conducting assessment and vice versa. So those kinds of things sort of really what led me to made it a natural fit to come to the Department of Special Education. And I'm not sure if I guess maybe that's breaking barriers in some ways, but I think I hope that there's more like it in the future, more crossover in both directions. And I think that, well, I think there's a fairly decent crossover between the fields of School Psychology and Special Education. I think there could be more. I think when things get too insular in any field, I have a lot of opportunities lost. And there's a great deal of advancement, innovation, new direction, new connections that are fostered when you have more communication and cross collaboration between fields. So. Yeah, for sure. So your work, a lot of your work is in dyslexia. And I know that that is perhaps a term that many people are probably familiar with, but maybe don't understand. So would you mind defining what dyslexia is and how this that particular reading difficulty is maybe different from other reading disabilities? Sure. And you're right. You know, it is something that is, I think, there's a lot of misconceptions out there. And I think a lot of different perspectives as well in opinions. I'm of the perspective that I think is characteristic of many in the research community that dyslexia is a specific learning disability. It is the same essentially as specific learning disability and basic reading. For years, many states have used the term specific learning disability or specific learning disability and basic reading, but did not use the term dyslexia. Other states have used the term dyslexia. In some cases have sought to perhaps differentiate or some groups have sought to differentiate dyslexia from SLD. And that has really never been part of the definition. Certainly, the research community often relies on dyslexia is a specific learning disability that involves significant difficulties reading and spelling individual words. And so difficulties reading words that obviously impact reading connected text. That's the hallmark feature of dyslexia. So in terms of difference from other reading disabilities, you know, the other primary area in which reading difficulties can occur is specific to reading comprehension for students that have relatively adequate word reading and maybe relatively adequate text reading fluency. They still struggle significantly in making meaning from text. And so I think the primary area where dyslexia would differ from other reading disabilities would be that is dyslexia being a word level reading disability in contrast to more text comprehension based types of difficulties and disabilities. Okay, that's helpful. I thought personally was was very helpful. So you recently co-authored a book called academic skills problems. Can you talk a little bit about what that book is about and what updates were made for the fifth edition of it? Sure. So academic skills problems direct assessment intervention. It's the fifth edition of Ed Shapiro's book. He, I'm a part of this. The late Ed Shapiro had published four editions of the text which had really become a, I'd call it a seminal text in school psychology and some related fields. It's a book that was relied on heavily by practitioners in training, practitioners in the field with the first edition that Ed wrote in the, that emerged in the late 1990, I'm sorry, early 1990s. He was written it across the late 80s. But I think it was unique in helping to advance a perspective on assessment that considered the academic environment in addition to the academic skills the students were demonstrating. His model, Ed's model was I think fairly unique at that time for a heavy consideration of the environment at which a student is educated in terms of the behavioral expectations, the academic skill instruction that's happening, other elements in the environment that could be contributing to students' academic difficulties in addition to understanding the skill difficulties that students are demonstrating. Another key element of Ed's model was the connection and the inherent consideration between considering what is what you test connected to what you've taught or what has been taught. And so, you know, a big part of Ed's perspective at that time and a lot of his contemporaries at that time as well. There was a reaction against this idea of what standardized testing looked like and what academic assessment looked like in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where there tended to be tests and assessment processes that evaluated skills that weren't very aligned with what students have been taught and then individuals trying to make recommendations or or placement decisions for students based on on those types of measures. And so with Ed's approach, again, you have this idea and consideration of the academic skills environment, but also using tests, using measures that evaluate students' performance on content that was highly aligned with what they had been taught, such as text. If you're assessing reading skills, you're pulling text or word list directly from the student's reader directly from the textbook of instruction that mathematics problems that you are evaluating the student on, there's our pool or sample directly from the content in which it was used for instruction and so on. So that's a bit on Ed's Ed's book. And I think as part of my approach, I think you asked about this. Sorry, I'm losing my chin up here. But as far as my revision, so I guess this is probably in 2018 at this point. Go for it, approach me and ask if I'd be interested in leading a revision to Ed's text, Ed Pastaway in 2015. And so it was a big decision. I mean, it was something that I wrangled with quite a bit because I knew how much this book had meant to people and how important it was to the field. But I also felt like it would be honoring Ed and his legacy to carry it on. And I think it also, I felt it could benefit from some updates. There have been a number of advances in understanding about academic skills development, certainly advances and expansion of tests and measures in terms of what skills are what tests are available and what skills they assess. And I think the primary area which I think I made revision was significantly more content around the development of reading mathematics and writing skills because I feel that if practitioners or school psychologists have a better sense of how these skills develop, they're in a better position to understand how they break down. It also leads to better understanding of what to assess, what measures to align with those particular skills that are relevant and then most importantly how to connect the results of the findings to intervention recommendations. So a major part of the revision is more of this idea of understanding of reading mathematics and writing skill development and thinking about models of assessment that are more informed by this evidence-based perspective on development and then connection to intervention. So to quickly touch back, you talk about the beginning of what you were talking about was like test what you teach, which doesn't seem like, which kind of seems like, yeah, right? That makes sense. So how do you think from your perspective what got us away from that in the first place that kind of made Ed get us back on track? Yeah, well if you think back, I mean if you look back at the 1980s and early 1990s you know back then and I'm kind of going off of sort of what I understand from that time and what I've read and the perspectives of Ed news contemporaries. You know, there's others that were that it was working with and others who had a similar mindset, people like Mark Shin, Jim Isledike, it individuals in special education and educational psychology like Standino and Doug and Lin-Fuke's and others. But if you consider that context back then, the availability of academic skills measures was rather limited. There weren't many of them. There was far more prevalence and availability of intellectual and cognitive assessments. It was also a time in which school psychologists were and many were routinely administering tests of projective tests, tests that coming from Freudian psychodynamic type of framework. In in some cases, learning disability evaluation, you might have a situation where where school psychologists are administering a Rorschach or a house tree person type of projective assessments and trying to make recommendations about placement identification and intervention around tests like that. And so if you're seeing this heavy use of intellectual, intellectual ability, cognitive assessment and projective tests being made to evaluate students achievement or using, you know, making use of the limited academic skills measures that were available with not very good alignment between, you know, what is tested and what was taught. You know, you could you can see how a reaction like this could have been possible. And I know it sounds perhaps like a no-brainer today, but I think back then was a different time and different availability of measures and different perspective on learning and achievement. I think yes. So I mean, I'm assuming I could be wrong. At most school psychologists are not administering a lot of projective measures, but we are still fairly commonly giving our cognitive and achievement, you know, standardized measures and then looking at discrepancy. And we know that discrepancy model has been noted for a long time now as being flawed for identifying reading disabilities. Can you talk about maybe different recommendations for kind of diagnosing reading difficulties like dyslexia or reading comprehension concerns? Mm-hmm, sure. Yeah, and it's something I don't get too much into recommendations on models around actual eligibility classification and learning disability identification, at least from a eligibility determination standpoint. I think there's a lot of times in which school psychologists don't have a great deal of autonomy in that with that question, they might be operating under rules or guidelines in their district or in their state around a particular approach. So, but however, regardless of whatever model you're using for eligibility determination, there is still flexibility. There are still options in what one chooses to evaluate academic skills. So apart from the eligibility determination, what you do from an academic skill standpoint assessment is you do have flexibility and there is nothing that I'm aware of. And perhaps there might be guidelines in some districts. There's nothing that says that you have to administer all the subtests of a particular academic skills battery, such as the Wyatt or the WJ, that you can find specific subtests that could measure a skill of interest, that you can think about more strategically what skills make more sense to assess for a particular student give their referral concern based on their scores and other measures and information you want to determine to get to the heart of their academic skills problem. And so, what I really advocate is that while the field continues to debate methods for learning disability identification and eligibility determination, that can still play out. You can still improve your academic skills assessment even if you're operating under a problematic discrepancy model, for example. So, and one thing that I talk about in the book is thinking about assessment from again, a more strategic way, for example, what I think the main contribution that I make to this new addition is the addition of the inclusion of what I refer to as Keystone models that could index skills. They're based on Keystone models of behavior, if you're familiar with Keystone behavior models, what Keystone models discuss or postulate is that there are certain behaviors that are relatively easy to define and observe. But when present, have significant implications for the students functioning and the environment as a whole. For example, on task behavior or task engagement is a Keystone behavior. We can see it, we can count it, we can measure it using different observation methods, we can define it pretty easily. You know, on task behavior is following the teacher's directions, meeting behavioral expectations, completing work, however you define in that particular context. But when you have a student who's engaged, you have a student who is in a position to learn. You have attention to task, so you have task engagement, you have work completion, you have attention, you have listening, when you have multiple students in an environment that are engaged, you have a environment that's more conducive to learning. And so, and when engagement is not present, you have the impact potentially negatively on learning and engagement and so on. And so, where I extend to this a bit is this idea of Keystone skills in academic skills development, reading, math and writing. And there's a model, a Keystone model for reading and Keystone model for mathematics and a Keystone model for writing. And it identifies key skills that we can consider, we can measure, we can think about their placement in a developmental span of reading, math and writing. They provide opportunities for assessment and identifying places where skills might be breaking down. And then also give us insight into intervention. So for instance, in reading, we can think about two foundational key to foundational, foundational Keystone skills in finimic awareness and letter sound correspondence. The two primary building blocks of word reading when students have an insight into the sound structure of language as finimic awareness, it provides the facilitates connecting letters to sounds, letter sound connections and spelling sound correspondence are the basis for learning to read words to the code. Word reading then becomes an ex Keystone skill where students develop skill accuracy, automaticity in reading individual words, which feeds directly into being able to reconnected text with efficiency. Reading connected text with efficiency then serves as another Keystone skill and facilitator of text comprehension, understanding what one has read. And then overarching this whole framework is language is vocabulary knowledge syntax background knowledge, this inner twine that has this direct impact on reading comprehension, but also influences other skills in the model as well. And so thinking about these Keystone skills in reading, it provides an access point, I think a very good one is oral reading, measuring or reading first as your first go to for a student who's referred for reading skills difficulty and then adjusting up or down based on what you're observing with our oral reading. Are you seeing slow and accurate reading, suggesting problems with foundational skills, assessing what's happening with word reading, what's happening with letter sound correspondence and finimic awareness that can inform why reading is just for are you seeing relatively good reading fluency or adequate reading fluency than and also and paired with difficulties in comprehension, which could suggest difficulties, language unfamiliar with vocabulary, other factors that could be influencing their comprehension difficulties. So this kind of perspective, I think, I like, I would hope people think a little bit more about, again, it's a more informed approach to assessment more strategic, thinking about how skills develop, what are some of those key critical skills in development, using those as access points for evaluation, for identifying the cause of a academic skill difficulty and reading math or writing, and then translating that to intervention. If we know where things are breaking down, we have a better sense of where we need to intervene, and then that brings up and that prompts lists of strategies, ideas, and programs for addressing skills in that particular area. And that can be done regardless of the model you're using for eligibility determination. That makes a lot of sense to me because basically you're recommending a kind of more efficient and strategic approach, those where the school psychologists doesn't have to go in there and be like, now I have to start from scratch and do every single test that there ever was, or every sub-test, right? So we are only going to go in and do what makes sense for the concern that the student is showing. So I think that makes a lot of sense. And saves us a lot of time at school psychologists because we're not necessarily giving eight different sub-tests for reading when really we don't need that many. Sure. One more quick thing about that, though, too. I think that's helpful to note is that, and this is, I think, where my perspective perhaps differs a bit on maybe Ed's perspective previously. But I'm also, I also think there's more flexibility today in the types of tests you use. You know, Ed was a big advocate for curriculum-based measures and curriculum-based assessment. But his model originated a time when there weren't many academic skills, commercial norm reference standardized tests. You know, that first edition came out before you had tests like the C-top, the comprehensive test of phonological processing, before you had other measures that were nicely indicative of early numeracy, early literacy, early writing, and so on. And so I think now school psychologists have more to choose from. And it's less about whether a measure is curriculum-based or norm reference slash standardized. More about does this test give me information on the relevant academic skill that I'm trying to measure? It's good, like key takeaway. So you kind of talked, I want to go back a little bit. You talked about how you can, you know, we're going to do this assessment. We're going to measure these skills to really see where the breakdown is. And then we can intervene where that breakdown is. Makes a lot of sense. A lot of school psychologists potentially aren't in a position to do those interventions. And are kind of going back and asking teachers to intervene with the students and say, hey, I figured out where the breakdown is. Kind of like I like diagnosed for the that the engine isn't working in the car. Now they give it back to you and say, okay, now fix the engine. So what is your do you have any recommendations for how school psychologists can be successful in their kind of pitching to teachers to do that intervention with the students? Sure. Yeah. And I think, you know, as I think about this too, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that, you know, there may not be many school psychologists who are in that position to directly intervene or do you have to play a role in the intervention. Where I think first and first, firstly, I think the recommendations that are coming out of an evaluation. I think can be more specific. I think far too often and in too many reports I've seen there are two generic. They are too cookbook. They're too cookie cutter. There are informed very well by the data. There's not much thought put into them in terms of what where the cause of the academic skills difficulty is. And so I think first off that the recommendations that school psychologists are making or educational diagnosticians as indicated in some states that those recommendations can be more focused targeted more data driven and aligned with evidence based perspectives on programs intervention. I think other times in which school psychologists have played consultative roles in terms of intervention that it's going on in the school level. And so that's tiered support systems with their supplemental support programs that are in place where school psychologists can identify relevant interventions for groups of students. That you know student based on data that's coming up on screening instruments and so on that can be a place where that intersection can occur. And then in more individualized settings and situations where the school psychologists perhaps can recommend. And so there are programs strategies techniques for individual teachers in some cases student may be going to special education or maybe are already be in special education and there may be opportunities to to collaborate and consult potentially with the special educators on what to do what to do that might be more a little bit more directly aligned with what the student needs. It's really kind of again there I do recognize the logistic issues and the times in which school psychologists just simply aren't involved intervention I think it comes down to recommendations that are more targeted that make more sense. And I think also providing resources being able to identify locate new programs new strategies new techniques that could be helpful you know there's also. I think important considerations around simplicity around thinking about intervention so in some cases for some students a simple adjustment could be very effective in thinking about making simple adjustments first and thinking about making more minor adjustments to instruction to the environment to how behavior is prompted reinforced and so on. And those simple strategies first and then moving to more intensive decisions more intensive changes when the data indicate that they're needed. And so that can be in some cases providing a classroom teacher with some ideas around you know here's how to respond maybe a little bit differently to behavior here's maybe a five minute practice activity the student could do with a peer that could help with you know maybe some review with some of the school area of simple strategy simple approaches that educators can be put in touch with that could be helpful and then again adjusting to something more intensive if that's needed. Yeah I think that's a great I mean that's what we would do in a lot of different practices right we would start with something that is like a just in a small way see if it works. Adjust table works adjust we don't go straight to like a you know open heart surgery you know right to figure out some other alternatives before doing that so I think that's a great recommendation thank you for sharing. Yeah so Ed's as approach you know he has his his forced that model in terms of evaluating evaluating the academic environment, valuing the students skills implementing intervention and monitoring progress and you know I think those those that type of approach and really help to advance and to push forward and move into school psychology again thinking about a more pragmatic way of assessing academic skills of integrating intervention. With assessment because you know what you learn from the students initial response to an intervention can lead to subsequent adjustment right and so within his force that model evaluating the environment students skills. It implementing intervention monitoring progress things are tying together things are more cohesive there's a more of an intersection between assessment intervention intervention is done explicitly and with the sole purpose of identifying intervention approaches. So you're a lot of who's implementing those intervention approaches then you're collecting data on an ongoing basis for progress monitoring the tells you the extent to which those adjustments those interventions are having the desired effect and then that can feed into whether or not these interventions should continue or if it or if adjustments needs to be made so that for step model is certainly remains in the newest addition of his book that's essential I think you know maybe I just added a few more ways of thinking about the different steps along the way. So I mean we talked a little earlier have a how there's kind of a misconception out there about dyslexia and then what learning disabilities are in general so what do you wish that the general public so parents out there and people understood about reading difficulties and or dyslexia. I think a big one you know there's still a lot of myths that are perpetuated about dyslexia about word level reading disability you know one of the one of the big ones that we constantly see reappear is this idea that dyslexia slash word level reading disability are caused by visual processing problems that students see letters and words. Jumped up mixed up squiggly and moving across the page that persists I mean I just saw a movie a couple months ago my daughter was watching it and I can't remember what it was called is this case me right now but about based on a true story about a girl from Australia who sailed around the world as a teenager and she has dyslexia but in the movie they portrayed it as they when they showed her reading they showed the letters scramble up and then to address it but they depicted in the film i'm not sure if this happened actually curging real life. But her mother used the colored highlighter just color over the words and then suddenly magically she could read. And so you constantly see this perpetuation this idea that that's a visual processing issue and that with this idea that it's a visual processing. issue you have a host of interventions that have not shown evidence of efficacy, such as colored overlays and colored lenses for reading, such as using special dyslexia-specific fonts that are written in a certain way, visual exercises and vision training, all kind of pointing at this visual modality issue. Yes, through cited reading, we use our eyes, we use vision, but ultimately where things are processed occurs mostly in the language centers of the brain. Any interventions that are solely focused on the visual modality are unlikely to be effective. There's that. I think also you're seeing, I think, with more legislation coming out now with a lot of states proposing dyslexia-specific legislation, you're seeing a tendency to try to make dyslexia unique from learning disability. Again, it's never been differentiated by the research community. dyslexia is a specific learning disability and basic reading, but I think now there's this idea that dyslexia is something different. When legislators get a hold of things, you know that there's going to be problems in interpretation. You're also seeing now states mandating, regulating, "dyslexia screening." Now schools think they need and states think they need new approaches to dyslexia screening when they have had very good methods and approaches for reading screening for decades. Things like the Dibbles gives you information from a screening standpoint to know what students are at risk for reading difficulties. Now with this idea around dyslexia screening, schools think they need something new and different. And now we're adding more assessment, we're causing more development and things are getting more fragmented and distracted. So I think those are some of the big ones. I think there's also remains a perception that for students with dyslexia, for students identified with it that the most effective approach will be a multi-sensory program or multi-sensory reading instruction. You'll see that often referred to as the gold standard. This is written into a lot of legislation and increasingly so. The intervention for students at dyslexia will be multi-sensory that will be involved academic language therapy or involve teaching the structure of English. Where this comes from is the Orton Gillingham approach to reading intervention which has existed for decades. Orton Gillingham is marked by multi-sensory approaches in which instruction seeks to simultaneously integrate instruction and activity that involves visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile senses throughout the instruction. It also teaches the structure of English in terms of extensive work in teaching syllable rules, in teaching spelling patterns and so on. So there's this view that these multi-century OG approaches are the gold standard. And that differs really from what the evidence says. Recent research synthesis, metanalyses indicated that yes, students do benefit from OG programs. However, they don't benefit from a statistically significant basis over non-OG or alternative types of approaches. And so really what the evidence indicates is that yes, some students will make a lot of growth with these type of programs but it doesn't mean that these are the only effective approach and that there may be others out there that are not multi-sensory per se that are not based on this particular model that could be could also be very effective. And so when you see things legislated and mandated, there becomes a problem potentially of schools, you know, not using the resources that they could be using for effective intervention. Part in the interruption, this episode of the Not Your Average Schools Psychologist Podcast is brought to you by the problem-solving interview for function-based intervention. The problem-solving interview for function-based intervention or the PSI is a brief indirect simple process for evaluating the function of an individual's behavior. The PSI includes training and materials for your team to hold a structured team-based interview to identify the environmental factors impacting an individual's behavior. Develop a testable hypothesis of behavioral function and engage in function-based intervention planning. Learn more about the PSI at www.centerforeffectiveschools.org. Now back to your episode. So follow up on that just really quickly. I think, unfortunately, a lot of school-based school psychologists don't have access to the literature or the research as easily, you know, as people who are in academia or those students when they were students. And so how do you recommend that school-based school psychologists find out which are evidence-based because, you know, maybe they learned 10 years ago that we're in Gileham was the way to go. And now maybe there's more research out there. What do you recommend for those schools of college? So we're like, I'm really interested in what would be a great effective rating program. So one resource that I think is really underappreciated that are fantastic are the the IES, what we're explaining how to practice guides. So the institutes institutes for education sciences, IES and the what works clearinghouse have published a series of practice guides in a multitude of areas reading behavior, mathematics, writing, English learners, early childhood and so on that really provide fantastic summaries of the key evidence with key recommendations for intervention instruction. They are high quality, they are based on extensive review and distill the information in a very, very accessible way. Usually these practice guides start off with say a set of four to six recommendations. Here's what to do. Here's a level of evidence behind each one. And then the rest of the practice guide goes through each one step by step and talks about the issues, talks about lingering questions, talks about where evidence is insufficient so far. So definitely those IES practice, IES, what we're explaining how to practice guides are fantastic. Second, Google Scholar now is a very, very powerful tool for identifying literature and where I would recommend the practitioners go first is to look for meta analyses or reviews meta analyses for those aren't aware are basically studies of studies. They are analyses that group multiple studies on a particular topic together thus facilitating a conclusion across numerous studies as opposed to just one. And so in Google Scholar, if you are thinking about okay, what are some, what are maybe some good approaches for reading fluency? Where can I find meta analyses for reading fluency? Just going to Google Scholar and simply typing something like reading fluency intervention meta analysis where you can include review in there as well. And what you'll see come up pretty readily are results of synthesis, meta analyses, research reviews on interventions for reading fluency intervention. So those kind, I think those those two approaches what what works clearinghouse also they do maintain a site where they evaluate specific programs. Over the years, they have evaluated branded programs and unbranded programs. You can get a sense of their conclusions. They have very rigorous standards in terms of what studies are accepted for the review. They're looking for very high quality rigorous experimental work. And so for a number of programs, you'll see that they can't make a conclusion because it simply hasn't been studied or it hasn't been studied with a quality type of with a quality study. And I think that's also eye opening too because if you look at particular programs, some of which I've mentioned and see the lack of high quality research that flies in the face of legislation saying that these type of approaches are gold standard, right? So I think taking a look at what works clearinghouse and thinking about and using those reviews also as a place to get a sense of best practice. Those are the three that come to mind. There's there's more out there of course. Laura Center for Reading Research has over the years, they've evaluated programs. I'm not sure how much they've kept up with with that more recently. But I think those give I think some good starting points for practitioners. Yeah, I think that's really helpful. I actually wrote them down because right before we got in this call, I got an email from someone saying, this child you evaluated what reading program are you recommending? And I was like, you're gonna look into that, right? Because they want a specific name of a program. They don't want to just say like a work on reading basic reading skills. That's then that's where it gets tricky because more so, I mean, we have a huge evidence problem. We don't have enough research on practices and programs where we do have tend to have a little bit more is on techniques and strategies. Less so on particular branded programs and approaches exist. And if especially if a program is very popular, it's been around for a while. It's possible that a experiment exists on it. Other times there just simply isn't. And so that can become tricky when you're looking for evidence around particular branded programs. When you were talking about kind of because I have some familiarity with OG and it can be more complex than you know, your basic standard probe. Where does the fidelity, like the fidelity of implementation come into play with these reading programs? And do you find that that impacts outcomes? Sure. Yeah. I think you certainly can, I mean, programs that that are out there will certainly run, run on a along a broad range of complexity in terms of both length of the program, how many days, weeks, months, it's intended, the duration of the program per day, how many times students should be getting it per week, how many minutes per day should be implemented, what type of lesson content is there, what group structure, so many elements go into programs, and they range a great deal in both their complexity and intensity. Certainly, fidelity matters, but work on fidelity, I think, is still emerging. And, well, I think before I go into that, though, and there's also, you know, with that complexity in programs, there's also expectations around training. There are some approaches, some programs, and some publishers expect a very high level of degree attainment certification before people are permitted to use a pick or program. Other approaches, for instance, the Sound Partners program, that Patricia Vatici authored and was reviewed by what was clearinghouse. Sound Partners was designed for people to pick up in maybe a one and a half day training, designed specifically for individuals like paraprofessionals to learn and implement and provide evidence-based high-quality intervention with no prior certification and relatively little prior training. And so the scripted nature of a program supports that, right? How scripted a program is, how much it walks the interventionist through what to do, what to say. Obviously, those elements can enhance fidelity at times. I did mention the evolution of the concept of fidelity. You know, I don't want to suggest that programs not be implemented the way they're intended. However, there is evidence that when practitioners, when interventionists, implement a program, remain true to its core elements, that they implement the non-negotiables of an intervention well, but then adapt it to make it their own, to make it unique, to help fit their current context to align with their students' needs. That adaptation has been associated in some cases with stronger achievement as opposed to rigorous fidelity to the program. It's not going to be the same for all programs, but there is a degree of flexibility, of adaptability, of contextualizing a program for a given situation that may enhance outcomes. In those cases, that contextualization may result in less than ideal, less than 100% fidelity, right? But you've actually enhanced it in a way that benefits the students more so. So I think there's, I think I'm sort of a more thoughtful way of thinking about fidelity as needed. But it's also risky because we do want programs implemented the way they're designed. We do want, but finding that place in which where things are flexible and can be adapted, that really comes as the trick and maybe program specific. That's really, really interesting. Also, of note, take note of this, because if you ever need a second career, it sounds like you could be a consultant in Hollywood or politics, that might be for a dyslexia consultant. So that feels like if you're ever sick of academia, that feels like we identified a second career. Well, yeah, thank you. Well, the thing is though, Hollywood doesn't want to hear that because they like seeing the quick fix, right? They like seeing, oh, look at this. We just highlighted words in different color. And voila, the student is suddenly a good reader. Right, the movie would have changed a whole lot if it was like a kid sitting at a table, getting an intervention for like, yeah, exactly. They don't want to see a six month intervention. Yeah, I might have changed the movie. Okay, so we'd love to hear a little bit about like, what you're working on now? What's your next big project? What are you excited about? Yeah, sure. So of a couple projects going on right now, we have one that I'm really enjoying. This is working with kids in grades two through four with significant word reading difficulties. Many of the students have dyslexia or haven't been identified yet or just are simply struggling. But we're developing an intervention that is perhaps more aligned with connectionness, frameworks of reading development, those you that read mark side and Berg's work, connectionist models exists, you know, in language and in other areas. But the connectionist model really kind of thinks a lot about the connection between a words, phonology, its pronunciation, its orthography, its spelling, and its semantics or its meaning. And those three areas combine and integrate and build connections between words. It helps explain in some ways how reading once kids are taught to read, it can kind of these kind of self teaching mechanisms can kick in. Anyway, we're working on an intervention that may capitalize on some of that, that those ideas and theories. So we've been testing a series of components across the past few years and have, we'll have some data emerging in the next couple years with that one. I'm also working with Marsha Barnes at Vanderbilt. We're testing a reading comprehension intervention that we developed on a previous project. This one is for adolescents working with kids in grades six through eight with reading difficulties. We are testing intervention that aims to improve their inference making when reading. And our ability to read read between the lines, which is so essential for reading text because rarely do authors give you every single detail. So we have an approach here that is targeting inference making and we're testing a computer based versus the teacher led version of the same intervention. And then some other work we have a project is wrapping up that was part of the IS MTSS research network. There we're looking at the integration of academic and behavior intervention with the netired system of support. And then some other stuff that didn't works. So when you mentioned projectives, I will never forget course that Ed taught where he came in right where wearing his ink plot tie and he said he was Dr. R shock and he told us like a projectives for a day. That I will can never hear the name Rorschach without thinking about that. So did you have any other funny and stories that you want to share? I was in my second year when I took that class. I started to think what the heck is he talking about here? What is going on? And I knew that he was probably doing this for a reason, but it was really convincing. And then of course, after he taught it, the next class, he debunks it. But I mentioned that in the the preface of the book because you know it really that that kind of experience was really helpful because I realized the value of being able to articulate an opposing viewpoint and to do it really well. And it really it's an example of the ideological touring test, which is you know that you should be able to articulate an opponent's viewpoint so that someone else who doesn't know you doesn't know which side of the debate you fall. So yeah, I think those are great. I mean other funny stories. I mean he was you know he always love to talk about baseball. I always like to talk about his sons and how they were doing. You know, he was intense guy. But also you know very, very caring and and considerate. And it is just when seeing him in a situation in which he didn't agree was very, very entertaining. You didn't want to be on the side of not agreeing with him or being on the opposite side, but it was always good to see him debate. And yeah, those are things I'll remember. Yeah, he was so invested in in teaching. I think that I didn't realize at the time that that wasn't typical. Right. I always thought like this is what I do. But now that I have interacted with other academics and stuff, I realize like, wow, like he didn't have to be teaching these courses. He was you know beyond that. And he still did taught first year and second year students about behavior assessment and about CBM. And he really was investing the students. So that's something I always remember about. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So to wrap us up today, will you share with us one thing you're thinking about that is not so average. It can be related to school psychology or completely not related to school psychology. Not so average. Yeah, you know, I think. I don't know. My mind is always going to their sports or other things I'm interested in. I'm from the Philadelphia area. I don't know why I'm going with this. Maybe because you guys are based around Philadelphia. Maybe that's why I keep going. But that's where I grew up, you know, and. And so I'm living in Texas and having done so for about 13 years, you get an interesting perspective on different regions of the country with how people perceive, you know, East Coast, West Coast. Central Texas is the zone thing. That's right. But yeah, that's that's kind of been been interesting seeing that and kind of feeling like reaction when people talk about Philadelphia being all people are so mean and nasty and. Well, yeah, that's true to a point, but it's also not that different from a lot of other cities too. So I don't know. This is a terrible answer to this question. I love this is the selfish answer because I'm from Kansas and I did the flip and I have family in Texas and I went to school in Oklahoma. And so it's so it took me a long time once I got here a couple of years ago to realize that like. Oh, it might say it's four like four miles away, but it's going to take you 30 minutes to get there. Whereas like the Midwest, it's four miles is like four minutes. You actually get to drive when you're on the highway. You actually get to drive and Texas is crazy. That you get to parts of Texas where the speed limit is like 90, which freaks me, which like totally freaks me out. But it's very different. And people always ask me that. My mother-in-law is always so curious if people in the Midwest are so different. If people in other places are so different. And I think we're all a lot more like than we think. And there's a lot more. There's a more overlap. But just sometimes it looks a little bit different. But we all kind of have similar goals and things we want out of life. So it just maybe man a fast, a little different. But except Philly sports fans are definitely a league on. We are. Yeah, we are. Well, yeah, that's another little thing I have. You know, like people I talk about, oh, you, you know, Philadelphia sport. You guys threw snowballs at Santa. Well, first of all, people don't know the real story behind that. Happened in 1960s. Yeah, Santa was inebriated. And anyway, there's a whole backstory behind that. Wait, no, tell me the story. I've never heard of it. I don't know it very well. I just know it happened long, long ago. And the Santa was so bad. He was so bad. It wasn't just like going out to the department store and throwing snowballs at like the kid. The Santa, the kids are sitting on this. It was a Santa who was failing in his in his duties as Santa. Right. And so he probably deserved to be booed. I don't know if people hang their hat on this thing. But if you go to New York, if you go to Boston, if you go to Chicago, you're going to see the same behavior. I mean, come on. Yeah. But I think there is some pride in being a hostile environment for opponents. And so yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of intimidating. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, now you have not to gosh, not to bring this up. It's going to date us a little bit. But now you have the, the Kelsey brothers, uh-huh. One's an eagle, right? And then one's a, one's a chief. So at least you get some camaraderie with them being like biologically related. Yeah. But you know, the thing with, um, with, uh, Travis dating Taylor, well, you know, our Taylor Swift grew up by all intents and purposes. She should be an Eagles fan. She was an Eagles fan, right? Hopefully she still is. I know I always see her with chiefs gear on, which is now she has to. Right. Yeah. My wife got so mad. My wife got so mad at me because I was railing against this like, oh, how could she do that? Like, yeah. We have really, she needs to borrow. Like when the Super Bowl one year, the, there's more like a half and half. So, yeah, sure. Hey, Ler needs to, needs to see where she got that from. And we're a sport, uh, like, yeah, sport, a half and a half jersey or, or the Eagles fans will never forgive her. That's right. Yeah. And I have taken you in a very, very weird direction. So I love it. I spent it. It was, that we're questions not so average. So I feel like that was accomplished. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is a very interesting conversation. That's really interesting. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking with you all. And, um, yeah, um, you feel free to share my contact information for listeners who want to get in touch. Have any questions? Any follow up? Um, it can reach me. Uh, email is probably best. So absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. The not your average school psychologist podcast is brought to you by the center for effective schools to learn more about the center for effective schools. Go to our website at www.centerforaffectiveschools.org.