Abstract
Performance is crucial in assessing and determining the knowledge that students acquire after reading. This paper will propose an envisioned research to determine whether remediation affects the standardized testing scores for students with disabilities.
It will describe the rationale of conducting the envisioned research to a fairly high degree of convincing clarity. While providing this rationale, it will provide a detailed comparison between the testing scores for normal learners and disabled learners.
In addition, it will establish the effectiveness of remediation in people with disabilities. Although other researchers have investigated on areas related to this topic, the proposed research will provide specified information concerning remediation of people with disabilities.
Moreover, it will correlate this research with publications which have been published by other researcher in regard to this topic.
Introduction and Literature Review
Reading is both a physical and a mental activity that facilitates delivery and reception of information. It requires learners to use various senses when they are studying.
However, learners with disabilities are unable to carry out all the necessary tasks owing to mental, psychological, and physical disorders that impact on their understanding capacity.
It is hypothesized that learners become incapable of performing some educational tasks because these disorders develop adverse stress and pressure.
Essentially, this stress leads to reduced concentration, poor cognitive inhibition, and restlessness that hinder effective internalization of information. In fact, poor cognitive inhibition impairs the capability of learners to ignore stimuli that are irrelevant to classroom tasks such as noise.
Therefore, these vices reduce the quality of education in most schools. While striving to provide quality education to all students including the disabled ones, some states have enacted rules that govern schools in order to improve academic performance.
In this regard, remediation is one of the core strategies that have been designed and implemented by many states.
Since this strategy is essentially crucial to the curriculum, this proposal will portray the importance of conducting a profound research that seeks to determine the effectiveness of remediation in reading.
While considering the disorders of learners with disabilities, their reading skills are affected severely causing poor performances when compared to other learners. For instance, Valencia et al. (2006) documented that deaf people experience auditory difficulties when reading.
This implies that this disability leads to strenuous reading which makes them person unfit in the normal reading procedures. Therefore, special education has been developed to cater for the reading needs of these people.
According to Chitty and Dawson (2008), learning is supposed to start early in life to facilitate proper mental growth which purports acquisition of effective reading skills. However, Chitty and Dawson pointed out that early special education posed many challenges to parents.
Further, they stated that these challenges made parents to avoid taking their children to school. Edure (2007) contended that old learners portrayed continuous reading problems owing to their aged brain.
Essentially, Ravitch (2000) identified that public schools determined students’ reading ability. This implies that if the skills are not attained at this stage, there are high chances of having problems in the future.
Recently, Kelly and Takalashi (2012) noted that many students have problems in reading and understanding. A review performed by Walczyk and Griffith-Ross (2007) showed that education managements had paid attention to acquisition of reading skills in the last 10 years.
This attention resulted to efficient reading strategies, intensification of reading practices, and overall effectiveness in learning.
What is the CRCT?
In the state of Georgia, the state assessment test is called the Criterion- Referenced Competency Test (CRCT). The implementation of CRCT was performed in the year 2000 to determine the way students attain skills and knowledge in regard to the state regulation.
This applies to English/language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies according to the Georgia Department of Education (Georgia Department of Education n.d.). This test is mandated for students in grades 1-8 including students with disabilities.
These disabilities may include aspects such as visual impairment, emotional behavior disorders, and specific reading disabilities among others.
The evaluations provide required information on educational accomplishment at the levels of the students, class, school system and the entire state (Georgia Department of Education n.d.).
This information is used to assess the weak and strong points of learners at personal levels in accordance to the states’ regulation, and to measure education quality in the state (Georgia Department of Education n.d.).
Students with Disabilities and the CRCT
In 2002, a body was formed to stipulate rules that facilitated curriculum fitness. The rules stated that schools were entitled to high performances (Jain, 2006). Moreover, the rules focused on the performance of learners with disabilities.
In respect to these rules, the state of Georgia assesses students yearly to determine the level of their educational knowledge. The students taking this test must attain a reading mark of 800 in order to pass. Otherwise, students who do not pass this test are enrolled for remediation.
This allows schools to establish the reading patterns of all learners. McCardle and Chhabra (2008) stated that it is possible to perform highly without difficulties after establishing the patterns of reading.
Moreover, remediation assists the struggling students to pass the state’s assessment (Duits & Dorman, 1998). Other researchers identified that stress is inversely proportional to performance (Sunderman, 2008).
Most learners undergo stressful situations that affect their performance. Stewart (2005) indicated that the stress arises from rejection and physical inability. Additionally, Riddle (2009) stated that explicit understanding of instructions through reading was not evident in learners with disabilities.
McCardle and Chhabra (2008) indicated that performance inabilities are created in the human mind before they are manifested physically. They argued that when learners accept failure, they become hopeless and get low grades.
However, when they realize their potentials and appreciate that they are similar to other learners who perform well in education, the chances of a new experience and performances arise. In fact, Jain (2006) had identified the results of effective learning.
Jain stated that there is no person who was born clever. The argument shows that knowledge is attained through efforts. This argument aligns with the model of Ravitch (2000). Ravitch suggested that knowledge is acquired by people who have the desires to attain it.
If a person cannot seek knowledge, there are no chances that knowledge will meet him/her. This statement was issued to strengthen learners by convincing them that they could be great achievers through education.
Other researchers identified that people with disabilities had other capabilities that made them special learners (Glenn, 2007).
Research Purpose
This research will approve the efficacy of determining the abilities of students when subjected to pressure. Actually, remediation helps the students to realize the disabilities they are facing and initiate the strategies applicable during formation of effective reading skills.
The future of these students relies on the initial abilities to read and understand written documents. When reading is biased, the other activities that require reading skills are arrested.
For instance, a student cannot answer questions in a comprehension when there are no language bases to facilitate understanding of the questions. Moreover, the research will establish basis of determining the effective strategies applicable in identification of a solution.
The research will either boost the strategies of testing or recommend changes on the existing techniques employed in the state of Georgia.
Also, this research will create basis for other researches on the area of special need that have not been exploited completely. Moreover, the research will help the researcher to learn skills that could be applied during data gathering and other research activities.
There will be bases and comfort for learners through informing them about the necessity of working hard through reading.
Limitations of the Research
First, learners could have disabilities in distinct levels which make the results imprecise. Secondly, reading does not apply efficiently to deaf students. This implies that they cannot be included in the reading test.
A precise evaluation of the trends in performance may require a lot of time and capital for a comprehensive handling. This is because learners change schools and/or complete schooling making the tracing hard and expensive.
Lastly, remediation becomes an additional task that students without disabilities do not undertake. This makes it hard to identify how remediation affects standard testing scores because the two parties are unequal.
Research Question and Hypotheses
Students with disabilities have various limits that other learners do not meet during their studies (Haugen & Musser, 2009). Therefore, they could face more challenges when reaching the standard passing scores for Criterion Reference Competency Test (CRCT).
These students have high chances of being among the people who sign up for remediation. However, it cannot be established whether these people manage to raise the passing score after remediation. Probably, due to the continued influences, they fail to reach their target scores.
In response to this uncertainty, the research will determine whether remediation in reading affects standardized testing scores for student with disabilities. This question triggers two senses that could avail from the research. These thoughts are termed as hypothesis.
The null hypothesis will state that remediation in reading does not affect standardized testing scores for student with disabilities. However, this hypothesis does not have a precise research method to prove it (Glenn, 2007). It is referred to as the null hypothesis.
The proposed research will aim at disapproving the null hypothesis. This disapproval will arise after approving the alternative hypothesis. In this research, the alternative hypothesis will state that remediation in reading affects standardized testing scores for student with disabilities.
Research Methodology
The research will involve various data gathering strategies. Quantitative and qualitative data will be gathered to perform the task effectively. The data will be gathered through interviews, review of previous data from CRCT managers and review of the present performance.
In the case of present performances, two groups will be formed. The first group will comprise of the students who did not attend remediation. On the other hand, the remaining group will accommodate students who were signed up for remediation.
Comprehension questions will be given to students for determination of the individuals who perform well and those who fail. The average of the final mark will be tallied as a combination and in accordance to the groups.
The marks will be compared to the performance of the previous performances during collection of the previous data.
The comparison will show whether remediation assisted in rehabilitation of the learners. This method will expect that the deficit existing between the earlier test and present test between the groups has reduced.
Research Design
Setting
The research will involve two groups of students where one group applies curriculum in fall remediation. On the other hand, the other group will not use curriculum in fall remediation. The data will be retrieved from compiled information from the CRCT (Kantrowitz et al., 2008).
For instance, the performance results of CRCT before remediation will be compiled and related to results after the test in 2012/2013. In case there are high correlations, the test will have indicated successful reading.
A review will be performed to assess the participating students. The present performances will be correlated to their earlier reading abilities. This will reveal the effects of reading skills on future education.
Participants
Research participants will include the 8th grade students who signed up to receive additional assistance and attended the remediation that is offered after school. Also, students will be involved through provision of information because they participated in the competence test.
According to data review, 14% qualified for special education due to emotional disorder, health problems and learning disabilities. This research will consider data analyst for other information and assistance.
Conclusion
Learners with disabilities face many challenges while striving towards educational success (Paul, 2002). Therefore, it is clear that they need to be considered because they fail and drag the school performance.
Low school performance leads to degradation of the concerned school and reduction of new students’ intake. A close intervention to help these students raise their performance will improve the school status and increase the intake.
This research has the capacity to identify many factors that affect students with disabilities in the education system. Its approval could lead to many advances that will facilitate better reading skills. Eventually, students will benefits from the research and realize the vitality of education.
References
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Georgia Department of Education. (n.d.). Web.
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