By Jenna Somers
When a young student writes "F-L-O-T-E" for "float," teachers at the Roberts Academy and Dyslexia Center at Vanderbilt University see the progress and potential behind her thinking.
"Her incorrect spelling of 'float' is brilliant!" says Samantha Gesel, assistant director of the Roberts Academy and assistant professor of the practice of special education. "She showed us that she can hear the two beginning sounds that form a consonant blend, which can be hard to hear at the beginning of a word for some learners. She also heard the long O sound and understands the concept of the 'magic E.' From a diagnostic perspective, her spelling tells us what might need to be the next focus of her literacy intervention-perhaps that's vowel teams, knowing that 'oa' can also spell the long O sound."
This brilliant incorrect spelling is just one data point among multiple data sources that teachers at the Roberts Academy can analyze in data teams and use to inform instructional adjustments.
Gesel and Jared Clodfelter, director of the Roberts Academy, recently offered a behind-the-scenes look at the school's systematic data team model that supports literacy development for students with dyslexia. In their co-authored article, "Leveraging the Power of Data Teaming to Implement and Intensify Diagnostic and Prescriptive Reading Instruction for Students With Dyslexia," published in the January/February 2026 issue of The Reading League Journal, they reveal how the Roberts Academy is using a collaborative, data-based decision-making approach to achieve meaningful academic gains and restore confidence and a love of learning in students with dyslexia.
"Our goal is to accelerate student learning and close academic gaps to support successful transitions back to future school settings," write Gesel and Clodfelter. "Knowing these transitions may occur after only a few short years adds urgency to our work. Early on, we recognized that the systematic use of assessment data would be critical to achieving these goals."
Students with dyslexia need educators who can diagnose learning patterns from student responses and prescribe intentional instructional adaptations. However, implementing this level of individualization can be difficult to scale across a whole school.
The data teaming solution: from diagnosis to prescription
The Roberts Academy addresses this challenge by building structured data teams guided by the National Center on Intensive Intervention's framework. Once a week, all faculty-three teachers, three interventionists, and two administrators-hold a 90-minute data team meeting to discuss outcomes and possible instructional adaptations for up to two students. They discuss each student's latest progress monitoring reports, their strengths and needs, and possible instructional practices influencing their academic performance. They also brainstorm additional evidence-based practices to intensify instruction and decide on an instructional adaptation plan with actionable next steps.
Every data team meeting ends with an examination of the latest progress monitoring data across students to select which students to discuss the following week.
In these meetings, Roberts Academy teachers analyze multiple data sources, including norm-referenced assessment data and curriculum-based measurement benchmark assessments to make comparisons with students in other schools. They also use benchmark assessments to select instructional levels to monitor and set individualized goals and use progress monitoring graphs to track students' growth throughout the year. Additionally, they examine lesson-specific and program-specific skill mastery data and engage in classroom observations.
This comprehensive analysis of student data elevates the expertise of teachers and allows them to understand where and why a student might be struggling as well as the specific adaptations to instruction that will most likely strengthen their literacy outcomes.
At the end of each trimester, teachers meet with parents to discuss progress charts with goal lines and key data points. Instructional adaptations are marked with vertical "phase change lines" on graphs, so that parents can see their child's progression before and after adjustments to instruction.
Lessons for other schools and the Roberts Academy's continuous improvement
As the Roberts Academy plans to expand from 25 to 144 students in the coming years, the school will shift to one or multiple grade-level data teams, each maintaining the same norms, structures and cadence.
Similarly, Gesel suggests that non-specialized schools serving students with dyslexia could adopt and adapt key elements of the Roberts Academy approach, such as establishing structured data teams, creating administrative guardrails that protect meeting times and space, using multiple data sources to evaluate student progress and leveraging existing resources like the NCII framework.
Like their approach to educating students, teachers at the Roberts Academy use data to continuously refine practices. In year two, the school made meaningful adjustments to give teachers more shared planning time. They also refined goal-setting approaches, added explicit instruction on executive functioning skills and incorporated classroom observations into data teaming discussions.
"We know that our systems and data teaming processes will continue to evolve as we grow," Gesel and Clodfelter write. "As leaders of a dyslexia school, we firmly believe in the power of using data iteratively to drive meaningful improvement."
