Research has shown that approximately 20 percent of U.S. children enter school at risk for reading failure. Schools typically respond to this concern by utilizing early identification and intervention procedures designed to prevent the occurrence of reading failure. Most often, these procedures rely on the heavy use of phonics based methods. These methods are often referred to as “best practice” procedures because they have been shown in rigorous research studies to improve the reading skills of many students at risk for reading failure.

However, best practice reading interventions are not effective for all students at risk for reading failure. Research has shown that a significant number of at risk students that receive best practice interventions do not improve their reading skills. These students are often referred to in the research literature as being “treatment resistant.”

Royer and Walles have published research that shows that treatment resistant students do show reading improvement when exposed to the fluency based interventions that are embedded in the Reading Success Lab software. Working with students that had not made good progress after years of phonics based interventions, Royer and Walles showed that the students did make significant reading gains using fluency training. Moreover, fluency based procedures have also been shown to result in reading improvement in students who do respond positively to phonics based instruction.

Read the Royer and Walles published research:

> Fluency Training as an Alternative Intervention for Reading-Disabled and Poor Readers