Early Interventions for Children With Reading Disabilities

We examined the effectiveness of 3 different reading interventions in second and third graders with identified reading disabilities. Fourteen special education teachers taught 114 second and third graders either synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, or sight-word programs in the resource room 60 min a day for 1 school year. Growth in phonological and orthographic processing and word reading was compared for the 3 interventions. Facilitative effects of synthetic phonics were reduced when demo- graphic and Verbal IQ covariates were included in the growth-curve models. How- ever, the most significant mediator of intervention effects was initial differences in phonological and orthographic processing skills. Implications for service delivery and identification of children for special education are discussed.