The academic effect of an intensive reading intervention program at a rural California middle school using data from a one year program

With the ratification of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) in 2006, states were required to permit public schools to provide varying levels of intervention for students who showed that they were struggling in one or more core educational areas (Department of Education 300.307(a) (2), 2006). This recommendation supported the use of the framework known as Response to Intervention (RtI) that was familiar in the research literature (Department of Education, 2006).;The theoretical framework chosen to support the RtI process in which three RtI programs are being analyzed is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). ABA is a theory that suggests interventions initiated to create improvement for an area in which a person has learning or developmental challenges needs to be carefully evaluated individually with each case and then a series of proactive responses to the data are initiated with the goal of having the individual experience improvement and growth (Axelrod, 2012).;Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare the CST reading proficiency scores of socio-economically challenged middle school students who participated in one of three interventions: low reading students who participated in an intensive reading program, low reading students who participated in the English Language Development (ELD) program, and low reading students who only participated in a Sustained Silent Reading program.;The methodology chosen was a quasi-experimental study because there were three independent variables: the Intensive Intervention Group (II), the English Language Development Intervention Group (ELD), and the Silent Sustained Reading Intervention Group (SSR). A Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was conducted on all three independent variables using the dependent variable to establish any significant differences and to measure any possible academic mean growth.;Two research questions were analyzed, including how the three groups scores would compare using the MANOVA and the impact of the interventions when comparing sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to each other as separate groups.;The results indicate that the use of Applied Behavior Analysis Creating research based intervention systems at the middle school can have positive results and can justify utilizing financial resources at the middle school level to provide RtI systems.