Language! Effects of an individualized structured language curriculum for middle and high school students.

This chapter documents the success of a 12-month individualized structured language curriculum (LANGUAGE!) provided to middle and high school juvenile offenders (n=45; 43 males; 2 females) enrolled in a rehabilitation program. Although individual students participated in the program for an average of just 22.7 weeks (SD 8.51), they made significant gains (more than three years growth) over this period in written language expression (composition), encoding (spelling), and decoding (isolated word recognition), as documented by standardized literacy measures, moving from standard scores in the 60s and 70s to the 80s and 90s. Gains on the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT III) were consistent with these measures and well exceeded gains made by a comparison group (n=51; 48 males, 3 females) which included students attending similar rehabilitation programs for a comparable period of time, but these students were not offered the individualized LANGUAGE! curriculum. Details of the LANGUAGE! curriculum and the basis of its success are discussed.