11 Mar Case Study for Data Analysis Report

Ethan Smith is a 13-year-old diverse learner in 7th grade. He has two parents who work with him diligently to improve his reading. At the beginning of the year, his mother expressed concerns over Ethan’s ability to read and explained how Ethan did not like to read but would try with much labor. She was concerned because the older he gets, the more complex the words are, and the more he struggles with understanding and completing his assignments. Ethan’s mother explained the difficulties he had with sounding out a word. She said she tried to get him to see the parts of a word within big words, but Ethan struggled greatly with this task. She explained that if he had to read just two pages and answer questions at night, it could take him up to two hours to complete. She wanted to know what could be done to help him since the gap gets bigger as he gets older.

The teacher, Ms. Clark, assured Ethan’s parents she would assess Ethan’s reading by providing universal screeners in reading and then create a plan of action. Ms. Clark began with passages from 1000 to 1200 Lexiles, representing the 7th grade Lexile levels. She gave Ethan three passages to read orally for one minute while she assessed errors as he read to measure his oral reading fluency (ORF). She measured the number of words he read correctly per minute by subtracting errors from the total number of words read. The total words read per minute (wcpm) with errors subtracted for Ethan’s universal screeners were 80, 78, and 83. She also completed a miscue analysis on the median passage that Ethan read. The below grade level ORF scores, his classroom performance, and his mother’s concerns signaled Ethan needed more rigorous instruction, so the RTI team met and moved him to Tier 2 in the RTI process.

At Tier 2, Ms. Clark began collecting ORF data from Ethan every week. To plot the data to measure growth, Ms. Clark established a baseline point from the median of the three ORF universal screeners and plotted that number on the graph as point 1. She calculated the ending or goal point (point 11) using research-based practices, which was the predicted goal score after the 10 weeks of interventions. Using all the data, she came up with interventions.

The following sets represent three possible data scenarios Ms. Clark could have received. Only one of these sets was the actual set, which was the set below grade level expectations.

Data for Scenario 1

Data for Scenario 2

Data for Scenario 3

68

79

83

83

83

84

80

75

87

83

83

90

65

80

91

80

90

89

79

87

92

76

85

90

81

81

89