Touro College - Identification and Remediation of Reading Disfluency as a Key to Bar Passage for At-Risk Populations

Program: Directed Grants Program
Grantee: Touro College
Grant Amount: $125,000

Summary of Grant Outcomes

Targeted Reading Support Shows Promise for Improving Law Students’ Comprehension

This grant funded research at the Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center examining whether remediation of reading disfluency in law school would improve reading comprehension, especially for law students with lower LSAT scores. Researchers used an eye-tracking device to record participants’ eye movements while reading and measured changes to their reading pace, providing evidence of reading fluency level. Participants who exhibited evidence of disfluency in the eye-tracking data or on a reading comprehension test were assigned to work with a reading specialist.

Results were mixed: students working with the reading specialist improved their reading comprehension test scores, but the eye-tracking data showed no gains in fluency. Students reported that working with the reading specialist had a positive effect on their reading comprehension skills. Unfortunately, only a small number of participants fully completed the program due in part to the COVID pandemic, making further analysis of the outcomes unreliable.