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04/13/2021. Research Study
This study was designed to examine the effectiveness of Reading Recovery as compared to three other instructional models. Treatments included (a) a treatment modeled on Reading Recovery, (b) a one-on-one skills practice model, and (c)a group treatment taught by trained Reading Recovery teachers.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Presents a longitudinal intervention study of 125 children experiencing difficulties in the early stages of learning to read. Seven-year-old poor readers were divided into 4 matched groups and assigned to 1 of 3 experimental teaching conditions: reading with phonology, reading alone, phonology alone, and a control group. Although the phonology alone group showed most improvement on phonological tasks, the reading with phonology group made most progress in reading. Results show that interventions to boost phonological skills need to be integrated with the teaching of reading if they are to be maximally effective in improving literacy skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
CPRE released its evaluation of one of the most ambitious and well-documented expansions of a U.S. instructional curriculum. The rigorous independent evaluation of the Investing in Innovation (i3) scale-up of Reading Recovery, a literacy intervention for struggling first graders, was a collaboration between CPRE and the Center for Research on Education and Social Policy (CRESP) at the University of Delaware.
The CPRE/CRESP evaluation revealed that students who participated in Reading Recovery significantly outperformed students in the control group on measures of overall reading, reading comprehension, and decoding. These effects were similarly large for English language learners and students attending rural schools, which were the student subgroups of priority interest for the i3 scale-up grant program.
The study included an in-depth analysis of program implementation. Key findings focus on the contextual factors of the school and teachers that support the program’s success and the components of instructional strength in Reading Recovery.
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study examined the effectiveness of Early Steps, a 1st-grade reading intervention program. Forty-three at-risk 1st graders, identified in September, received an average of 91 1-to-1 tutoring lessons during the school year. The work of the tutors was carefully guided by a trainer who made 9 site visits. At the end of the school year, the Early Steps group outperformed a comparison group on a variety of reading measures, including oral reading accuracy, comprehension, and pseudoword decoding. Moreover, Early Steps tutoring made the largest difference for those children who were most at risk (lowest in reading ability) in September. In discussing the intervention model, emphasis is given to its systematic word study component and to the critical role of the trainer of tutors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
This article discusses a study that experimentally evaluated the effects of supplemental instruction in reading for students in kindergarten through Grade 3. Using the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacyeracy Skills (DIBELS) and a measure of oral reading fluency, 256 students in kindergarten through second grade (158 Hispanic, 98 non-Hispanic) were screened. Students were then randomly assigned to receive or not receive supplemental reading instruction focused on phonological awareness and decoding skills. Reading skill was assessed in the fall of the first year of participation and again in the spring of Years 1 and 2 (Times 2 and 3). Children who received the supplemental reading instruction performed significantly better on measures of word attack skills at Time 2 and on measures of word attack, word identification, oral reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension at Time 3. There were no differences in the effectiveness of instruction as a function of Hispanic students' level of English proficiency or as a function of student gender or grade.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Despite data supporting the benefits of early reading interventions, there has been little evaluation of the long-term educational impact of these interventions, with most follow-up studies lasting less than two years (Suggate, 2010). This study evaluated reading outcomes more than a decade after the completion of an 8-month reading intervention using a randomized design with second and third graders selected on the basis of poor word-level skills (Blachman et al., 2004). Fifty-eight (84%) of the original 69 participants took part in the study. The treatment group demonstrated a moderate to small effect size advantage on reading and spelling measures over the comparison group. There were statistically significant differences with moderate effect sizes between treatment and comparison groups on standardized measures of word recognition (i.e., Woodcock Basic Skills Cluster, d = 0.53; Woodcock Word Identification, d = 0.62), the primary, but not exclusive, focus of the intervention. Statistical tests on other reading and spelling measures did not reach thresholds for statistical significance. Patterns in the data related to other educational outcomes, such as high school completion, favored the treatment participants, although differences were not significant.
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study investigates the effects and feasibility of an intervention for first-grade students at risk for reading difficulties or disabilities (RD). The intervention was provided by general education classroom teachers and consisted of 15 min whole-class comprehension lessons (Tier 1) and 30 min Tier 2 intervention sessions in word reading, comprehension, and text reading. First-grade teachers (n = 21), with 4–5 students at risk for reading difficulties and potential reading disability were randomly assigned to treatment or typical practice comparison conditions. Significant group differences were detected on all measures of word reading, decoding, and fluency. Effect sizes were educationally important for all measures of word reading, decoding, and reading comprehension; however, effects on standardized measures were smaller than those in prior studies with similar students in which intervention was typically provided outside the regular classroom. An exploratory analysis indicated that students at different parts of the pretest and posttest distributions responded more and less positively to the intervention, providing insights that may help guide future revisions. The study provides preliminary evidence of the intervention's promise for positively impacting student outcomes.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Research examining effective reading interventions for students with reading difficulties in the upper elementary grades is limited relative to the information available for the early elementary grades. In the current study, we examined the effects of a multicomponent reading intervention for students with reading comprehension difficulties. We used a partially nested analysis with latent variables to adequately match the design of the study and provide the necessary precision of intervention effects. We examined the effects of the intervention on students’ latent word reading, latent vocabulary, and latent reading comprehension. In addition, we examined whether these effects differed for students of varying levels of reading or English language proficiency. Findings indicated the treatment significantly outperformed the comparison on reading comprehension (Effect Size = 0.38), but no overall group differences were noted on word reading or vocabulary. Students’ initial word reading scores moderated this effect. Reading comprehension effects were similar for English learner and non-English learner students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
Burst: Reading (Burst) represents a breakthrough in delivering highly differentiated reading instruction based on formative assessment data. Using cutting-edge mobile technology for assessment administration, students attending schools that implement Burst are first screened with a multi-battery assessment that a) provides cross-skill information about a student’s reading ability and b) identifies students who are below expectations for specific skills at appropriate grade levels. The assessment provides information about skills that contribute to the successful development of reading comprehension and includes all of the measures from Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacyeracy Skills (DIBELS: Next) that assess letter name knowledge, phonological awareness, decoding, fluency, and comprehension. The multi-battery assessment includes three additional measures: comprehension, vocabulary, and late decoding inventories. Burst is driven by sophisticated data-analysis algorithms to generate lesson plans and engaging instruction materials for small groups. Incorporating instructional prioritization rules based on grade and time of year, the algorithm prescribes 30 minutes of small-group instruction in up to two skills (Gersten, et al., 2008) to students identified as needing intervention. Teachers, coaches, specialists, and qualified volunteers deliver 10-day “Bursts” of instruction to small groups of students based on the formative assessment results for each student. Instruction is then tailored to the skills defined as the most critical based on students’ grade and time of year.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Considerable research evidence supports the provision of explicit instruction for students at risk for reading difficulties; however, one of the most widely implemented approaches to early reading instruction is Guided Reading (GR; Fountas & Pinnel, 1996), which deemphasizes explicit instruction and practice of reading skills in favor of extended time reading text. This study evaluated the two approaches in the context of supplemental intervention for at-risk readers at the end of Grade 1. Students (n = 218) were randomly assigned to receive GR intervention, explicit intervention (EX), or typical school instruction (TSI). Both intervention groups performed significantly better than TSI on untimed word identification. Significant effects favored EX over TSI on phonemic decoding and one measure of comprehension. Outcomes for the intervention groups did not differ significantly from each other; however, an analysis of the added value of providing each intervention relative to expected growth with typical instruction indicated that EX is more likely to substantially accelerate student progress in phonemic decoding, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension than GR. Implications for selection of Tier 2 interventions within a response-to-intervention format are discussed.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Reading problems are among the most prevalent concerns in schools; poor readers in elementary school who do not receive special assistance are particularly at risk for dismal academic careers. In a large-scale project, children with serious reading problems received targeted intervention to address critical early literacy skills. The assistance combined focused practice and frequent monitoring to provide instruction needed to improve reading skills. Participating students achieved significant gains in reading performance compared to a control group not receiving intervention. The outcomes of the study relate to continuing efforts to reduce the very large numbers of children failing to achieve early literacy skills in U.S. schools.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Several reviews of programs for struggling readers in elementary school have been completed (Galuschka, Ise, Krick, & Schulte-Körne, 2014; Slavin, Lake, Davis, & Madden, 2011; Wanzek et al., 2016; Wanzek & Vaughn, 2007). However, since those reviews have appeared, many additional studies have been published. In particular, funding supporting this type of rigorous program evaluation has been made available through the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and Investing in Innovation (i3), and this funding has accelerated the pace of progress in this area. The use of evidence in education has also grown and is now encouraged and even in some cases required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). There is high demand for up-to-date information about what programs are effective, particularly for elementary struggling readers. This review builds upon the existing reviews by updating what is known about which effective programs exist for struggling elementary readers. It differs from the more recent of the prior reviews in that it focuses on identifying replicable programs and includes not only supplemental programs (such as tutoring), but also includes studies of effects on struggling readers of class- and school-wide models used with struggling readers.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The last three decades have been a period of enormous growth in our understanding of early reading development (National Reading Panel, 2000; Raynor, Foorman,Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2002; Stanovich, 2000). For instance, we now have a much clearer understanding of the way that early growth in phonemic awareness and knowledge of letter-sound correspondences support growth in the ability to read text accurately (Share & Stanovich, 1995). We also have more explicit knowledge about the connections between early growth of phonemic decoding skills and later development of reading fluency (Ehri, 2002), and we also know more about the relationships between fluency of reading text and growth of reading comprehension (Samuels & Farstrup, 2006).
04/13/2021. Research Study
This report summarizes evaluation results for an efficacy study of the Leveled Literacyeracy Intervention system (LLI) implemented in Tift County Schools (TCS) in Georgia and the Enlarged City School District of Middletown (ECSDM) in New York during the 2009-2010 school year. Developed by Fountas & Pinnell (2009) and published by Heinemann, LLI is a short-term, small-group, supplemental literacy intervention system designed for students in kindergarten through second grade (K-2) who struggle with literacy. The goal of LLI is to provide intensive support to help these early learners quickly achieve grade-level competency. Both school districts evaluated in this study adopted the targeted, small-group implementation model of LLI in their schools with support from Heinemann consultants providing LLI professional development. This report focuses on the implementation and impact of this model during the first full school year of the system in these schools. The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to determine the efficacy of the Leveled Literacyeracy Intervention system (LLI) in increasing reading achievement for K-2 students; (2) to examine the implementation fidelity of LLI; and (3) to determine perceptions of the LLI system according to relevant stakeholders. This study focused on two U.S. school districts and comprised 427 K-2 students who were matched demographically and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. This evaluation used a mixed-methods design to address the following key research questions: (1) What progress in literacy do students who receive LLI make compared to students who receive only regular classroom literacy instruction? (2) Was LLI implemented with fidelity to the developers' model? and (3) What were LLI teachers' perceptions of LLI and its impact on their students' literacy? Altogether, the results from this evaluation allow us to conclude that the LLI system positively impacts students' literacy skills. These results also suggest that continued implementation of LLI would be beneficial in both Tift County Schools and the Enlarged City School District of Middletown. From this evaluation, CREP proposes several recommendations. (Contains 34 tables, 8 footnotes, and 1 figure.) [This study was supported by funding from Heinemann Publishing.]
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study compared the effects of 2 supplemental interventions on the beginning reading performance of kindergarteners identified as at risk of reading difficulty. Students (N = 206) were assigned randomly at the classroom level either to an explicit/systematic commercial program or to a school-designed practice intervention taught 30 min per day in small groups for approximately 100 sessions. Multilevel hierarchical linear analyses revealed statistically significant effects favoring the explicit/systematic intervention on alphabetic, phonemic, and untimed decoding skills with substantive effect sizes on all measures except word identification and passage comprehension. Group performance did not differ statistically on more advanced reading and spelling skills. Findings support the efficacy of both supplemental interventions and suggest the benefit of the more explicit/systematic intervention for children who are most at risk of reading difficulty.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The study took place in 13 urban elementary and K-8 schools in Denver, Colorado.
Study sample
The study population consisted primarily of minority and economically-disadvantaged students. Roughly three out of four (69%) study participants were Hispanic, and one-third (34%) were classified as English learners. Finally, between 72%–97% of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in 11 of the 13 schools, and almost half (48%) of the students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in one other school; no data were reported for the remaining school.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The purpose of this varied replication study was to evaluate the effects of a supplemental reading intervention on the beginning reading performance of kindergarten students in a different geographical location and in a different instructional context from the initial randomized trial. A second purpose was to investigate whether students who received the intervention across both the initial and replication studies demonstrated similar learning outcomes. Kindergarten students (n = 162) identified as at risk of reading difficulty from 48 classrooms were assigned randomly at the classroom level either to a commercial program (i.e., Early Reading Intervention; Pearson/Scott Foresman, 2004) that included explicit/systematic instruction (experimental group) or school-designed typical practice intervention (comparison group). Both interventions were taught by classroom teachers for 30 min per day in small groups for approximately 100 sessions. Multilevel hierarchical linear analyses revealed no statistically significant differences between conditions on any measure. Combined analyses that included students from both the initial and replication studies suggested that differences in the impact of the intervention across studies were largely explained by mean differences in the comparison group students’ response to school-designed intervention.
04/13/2021. Research Study
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (U.S. Department of Education 2006), 36 percent of fourth graders read below the basic level. Such literacy problems can worsen as students advance through school and are exposed to progressively more complex concepts and courses. While schools often are able to provide some literacy intervention, many lack the resources⎯teachers skilled in literacy development and appropriate learning materials⎯to help older students in elementary school reach grade-level standards in reading. The consequences of this problem are life changing. Young people entering high school in the bottom quartile of achievement are substantially more likely than students in the top quartile to drop out of school, setting in motion a host of negative social and economic outcomes for students and their families. For their part, the nation’s 16,000 school districts are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on educational products and services developed by textbook publishers, commercial providers, and nonprofit organizations. Yet we know little about the effectiveness of these interventions. Which ones work best? For whom do they work best? Do these programs have the potential to close the reading gap?
04/13/2021. Research Study
n/a
04/13/2021. Research Study
The effectiveness study examined a supplemental reading intervention that may be appropriate as one component of a response to intervention system. First-grade students in 31 schools who were at risk for reading difficulties were randomly assigned to receive Responsive Reading Instruction (RRI; Denton, 2001; Denton & Hocker, 2006; n = 182) or typical school practice (TSP; n = 240). About 43% of the TSP students received an alternate school-provided supplemental reading intervention. Results indicated that the RRI group had significantly higher outcomes than the TSP group on multiple measures of reading. About 91% of RRI students and 79% of TSP students met word reading criteria for adequate intervention response, but considerably less met a fluency benchmark.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Explored methods to enhance mathematical problem solving for students with mathematics disabilities (MD). A small-group problem-solving tutoring treatment incorporated explicit instruction on problem-solution rules and on transfer. The transfer component was designed to increase awareness of the connections between novel and familiar problems by broadening the categories by which students group problems requiring the same solution methods and by prompting students to search novel problems for these broad categories. To create a stringent test of efficacy, a computer-assisted practice condition, which provided students with direct practice on real-world problem-solving tasks, was incorporated. 40 4th graders were assigned to problem-solving tutoring, computer-assisted practice, problem-solving tutoring plus computer-assisted practice, or control, and pre-and posttested students on three problem-solving tasks. On story problems and transfer story problems, tutoring (with or without computer-assisted practice) effected reliably stronger growth compared to control; effects on real-world problem solving, although moderate to large, were not statistically significant. Computer-assisted practice added little value beyond tutoring but yielded moderate effects on two measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
04/13/2021. Research Study
THE AUTHORS evaluated the effectiveness of Reading Recovery (RR) in 10 primary schools in New South Wales. Children were randomly assigned to either RR or a control condition in which they received only the resource support typically provided to at-risk readers. Low-progress readers from five matched schools where RR was nor in operation were used as a comparison group. Results indicated that at short-term evaluation (15 weeks), the RR group were superior to control students on all tests measuring reading achievement but not on two out of three tests which measured metalinguistic skills. At medium-term evaluation (30 weeks) there were no longer any differences between the RR and control children on seven out of eight measures. Single-case analysis suggested that, 12 months after discontinuation, about 35% of RR students had benefited directly from the program, and about 35% had not been ''recovered.'' The remaining 30% would probably have improved without such an intensive intervention, since a similar percentage of control and comparison students had reached average reading levels by this stage.
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study evaluated the effects of using the Edmark Reading Program, Level 1, to develop sight-word vocabulary in first graders at risk for reading failure. This program is a highly structured approach based on providing explicit, direct instruction that is intensive, focused, and not of brief duration. The 62 students receiving the intervention attended three schools with high numbers of economically disadvantaged students in rural Louisiana and were selected as being in the 20-30 percent of students most at risk for reading disabilities. Half of the students received 15 minutes per day of one-on-one tutoring using the Edmark program by volunteer college students. Control group students were read to aloud in small groups for an equal amount of time. The study found that one-on-one tutoring using the Edmark Reading Program was successful in increasing the sight word vocabulary and comprehension skills of the students. (Contains 36 references.) (DB)
04/13/2021. Research Study
The authors compared the influence of text difficulty--reading-level matched or grade-level matched--on the growth of poor readers' reading ability over 18 weeks of 1-to-1 tutoring. Forty-six 3rd-5th graders, including 25 with disabilities, were assigned randomly to 1 of 2 tutoring approaches or a control condition. Significant differences favored tutored children. Between approaches, the only significant difference was oral reading fluency, which favored students who read material at their reading level. Students who began with lower fluency made stronger gains in text matched to reading level; students with higher fluency profited from both treatments. When the 3 groups were combined, fluency was the strongest contributor to reading comprehension outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study assessed the effects of small-group tutoring with and without validated classroom instruction on at-risk students' math problem solving. Stratifying within schools, 119 3rd-grade classes were randomly assigned to conventional or validated problem-solving instruction (Hot Math, schema-broadening instruction). Students identified as at risk (n=243) were randomly assigned, within classroom conditions, to receive or not receive Hot Math tutoring. Students were tested on problem-solving and math applications measures before and after 16 weeks of intervention. Analyses of variance, which accounted for the nested structure of the data, revealed that the tutored students who received validated classroom instruction achieved better than the tutored students who received conventional classroom instruction (effect size=1.34). However, the advantage for tutoring over no tutoring was similar whether students received validated or conventional classroom instruction (effect sizes=1.18 and 1.13). Tutoring, not validated classroom instruction, reduced the prevalence of math difficulty. Implications for responsiveness-to-intervention prevention models and for enhancing math problem-solving instruction are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study investigated the effectiveness and efficiency of the Reading Recovery early intervention. At-risk 1st-grade students were randomly assigned to receive the intervention during the 1st or 2nd half of the school year. High-average and low-average students from the same classrooms provided additional comparisons. Thirty-seven teachers from across the United States used a Web-based system to register participants (n = 148), received random assignment of the at-risk students from this system, and submitted complete data sets. Performance levels were measured at 3 points across the year on M. M. Clay's (1993a) observation survey tasks, 2 standardized reading measures, and 2 phonemic awareness measures. The intervention group showed significantly higher performance compared with the random control group and no differences compared with average groups. Further analyses explored the efficiency of Reading Recovery to identify children for early intervention service and subsequent long-term literacy support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study examined the effectiveness of nonprofessional tutors in a phonologically based reading treatment similar to those in which successful reading outcomes have been demonstrated. Participants were 23 first graders at risk for learning disability who received intensive one-to-one tutoring from noncertified tutors for 30 minutes, 4 days a week, for one school year. Tutoring included instruction in phonological skills, letter-sound correspondence, explicit decoding, rime analysis, writing, spelling, and reading phonetically controlled text. At year end, tutored students significantly outperformed untutored control students on measures of reading, spelling, and decoding. Effect sizes ranged from .42 to 1.24. Treatment effects diminished at follow-up at the end of second grade, although tutored students continued to significantly outperform untutored students in decoding and spelling. Findings suggest that phonologically based reading instruction for first graders at risk for learning disability can be delivered by nonteacher tutors. Our discussion addresses the character of reading outcomes associated with tutoring, individual differences in response to treatment, and the infrastructure required for nonprofessional tutoring programs.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which Data-Based Instruction (DBI) was effective in improving early writing performance of students with intensive needs depending on their special education status and types of writing skills. The extent to which DBI is feasible to implement was examined as a secondary purpose. A pretest-posttest control group design was used. Forty-eight students identified as at risk or with disabilities that affect their writing skills were assigned randomly within classrooms to either treatment or control conditions. Students in the treatment condition received DBI by six trained tutors three times per week, for 30 min per day, over 12 weeks. Students in the control condition received business as usual writing instruction in their classrooms. Students' writing performance was measured by Curriculum-Based Measures in Writing (CBM-W) and the Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ III) writing subtests (Spelling, Writing Fluency, and Writing Samples) before and after the treatment. Tutors were asked to rate the feasibility, usefulness, and their overall satisfaction with DBI at the end of the study. Results of multivariate analyses of variance revealed a significant main effect of DBI for CBM-W. There was no significant main effect of DBI found for the WJ III writing subtests; however, a significant interaction between special education status and treatment condition was found, whereby students with disabilities in the treatment condition outperformed control students with disabilities. Tutors' positive ratings on the feasibility survey indicate the potential of DBI to be implemented in schools. Limitations followed by implications for research and practice are discussed.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Second- and 3rd-grade children with poor word-level skills were randomly assigned to 8 months of explicit instruction emphasizing the phonologic and orthographic connections in words and text-based reading or to remedial reading programs provided by the schools. At posttest, treatment children showed significantly greater gains than control children in real word and nonword reading, reading rate, passage reading, and spelling, and largely maintained gains at a 1-year follow-up. Growth curve analyses indicated significant differences in growth rate during the treatment year, but not during the follow-up year. Results indicate that research-based practices can significantly improve reading and spelling outcomes for children in remedial programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)