Comment on Buzick and Stone: Two Tales of One City

Does Use of Text-to-Speech and Related Read-Aloud Tools Improve Reading Comprehension for Students With Reading Disabilities? A Meta-Analysis

“…These studies investigated read-aloud accommodations for students with and without disabilities (focused more broadly than just reading disabilities) on English and math assessments. Comprehensive comparative comments on the two studies can be found in (Buzick & Stone, 2014a; Li, 2014a); however, we will provide a brief description of the two studies to illustrate how the current study extends the previous findings.…”

“…Li (2014) was focused on two general questions of the effects of read aloud accommodations for students with and without disabilities on reading assesments, and which factors would influence those effects of read-aloud accommodations. Those factors were explored through moderators (e.g., disability status and content area) and effect sizes were compared utilizing hierarchical linear modeling.…”

“…Their inclusionary criteria were stricter than those used by Li (2014a), resulting in a smaller number of studies included in the meta-analysis. The results supported those of Li (2014a) in that smaller effects were found for math assessments compared to reading assessments regardless of student disability status. Additionally, students with disabilities did not benefit differentially on math assessments compared to students without disabilities.…”

“…Buzick and Stone (2014b) carried out a meta-analysis that addressed the effects of read-aloud accommodations for students with and without disabilities on standardized assessments, whether read-aloud accommodations improve test scores more for students with disabilities compared to students without disabilities, and what factors contribute to differences between the effects of students with and without disabilities for read-aloud accommodations. Their inclusionary criteria were stricter than those used by Li (2014a), resulting in a smaller number of studies included in the meta-analysis. The results supported those of Li (2014a) in that smaller effects were found for math assessments compared to reading assessments regardless of student disability status.…”