Ongoing Practice Opportunities as a Method for Maintaining Reading Intervention Effects

This study evaluated the impact of a low-intensity strategy designed to facilitate maintenance of reading skill gains made during Tier 2 intervention. A subsample of kindergarten, second grade, and third grade students who exited from a standard protocol Tier 2 intervention (n = 168) continued to receive brief (2–3 min), weekly opportunities to practice intervention targets with feedback on performance. Propensity scores were used to create an appropriate counterfactual (i.e., students who exited the program but did not participate in postexit practice sessions) using nearest neighbor matching (n = 168). Across all grades, students who engaged in weekly practice opportunities with feedback after exiting the intervention had a higher probability of meeting the end-of-year benchmark relative to students who did not participate in the ongoing practice condition. Results suggest that providing brief opportunities for students to practice key reading skills via typical progress monitoring procedures may be a beneficial maintenance strategy for students exiting Tier 2 support.