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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
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
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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
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
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
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 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 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
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)
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study assessed the effects of preventative tutoring on the math problem solving of third-grade students with math and reading difficulties. Students (n = 35) were assigned randomly to continue in their general education math program or to receive secondary preventative tutoring 3 times per week, 30 min per session, for 12 weeks. Schema-broadening tutoring taught students to (a) focus on the mathematical structure of 3 problem types; (b) recognize problems as belonging to those 3 problem-type schemas; (c) solve the 3 word-problem types; and (d) transfer solution methods to problems that include irrelevant information, 2-digit operands, missing information in the first or second positions in the algebraic equation, or relevant information in charts, graphs, and pictures. Also, students were taught to perform the calculation and algebraic skills foundational for problem solving. Analyses of variance revealed statistically significant effects on a wide range of word problems, with large effect sizes. Findings support the efficacy of the tutoring protocol for preventing word-problem deficits among third-grade students with math and reading deficits.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Although reading is a fundamental skill, many students leave school without being proficient readers. We examine a literacy program targeting students most at-risk of reading difficulties in kindergarten and first grade. The program includes multi-sensory learning methods, which focus on phonological awareness and phonics and are delivered in a one-to-one or one-to-two tutoring setting. Using a randomized field experiment with 161 students in 12 Swedish schools, we find large positive effects on our two primary outcomes measures: a standardized test of decoding and a standardized test of letter knowledge. We also find positive effects on measures of phonological awareness and self-efficacy and small and statistically insignificant effects on measures of enjoyment and motivation. The program compares favorably to similar programs in terms of cost-effectiveness.
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
Because of the importance of teaching reading comprehension to struggling young readers and the infrequency with which it has been implemented and evaluated, we designed a comprehensive first-grade reading comprehension program. We conducted a component analysis of the program’s decoding/fluency and reading comprehension dimensions (DF and COMP), creating DF and DF+COMP treatments to parse the value of COMP. Students (N = 125) were randomly assigned to the two active treatments and controls. Treatment children were tutored three times per week for 21 weeks in 45-min sessions. Children in DF and DF+COMP together performed more strongly than controls on word reading and comprehension. However, pretreatment word reading appeared to moderate these results such that children with weaker beginning word reading across the treatments outperformed similarly low-performing controls to a significantly greater extent than treatment children with stronger beginning word reading outperformed comparable controls. DF+COMP children did not perform better than DF children. Study limitations and implications for research and practice are discussed.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of a comprehensive reading intervention on the beginning reading skills of elementary students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Forty-seven first grade students (28 experimental, 19 comparison) who were formally screened and determined to be at risk for EBD participated in the study. Participants randomly assigned to the experimental condition received the standard reading curriculum plus an intensive supplemental reading intervention [i.e., Sound Partners (Vadasy, Wayne, O'Connor, Jenkins, & Pool, 1996)]. Sound Partners is an evidence-based, comprehensive, and intensive 100-lesson intervention that offers systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, letter-sound relationships, word identification, text reading, and writing. Participants in the comparison condition received the standard reading curriculum and a social adjustment intervention. A pre/post experimental group design was used to address the following research question: What effects did the Sound Partners reading intervention have on the beginning reading skills of first grade students at risk for EBD? Results indicated that (1) the reading intervention was implemented with fidelity, and (2) participants in the experimental condition generally showed statistically and educationally significant improvements in measured reading skills across one standardized and three curriculum-based measures of beginning reading skills. Statistically significant differences were determined for one cluster (i.e., basic skills) and an overall reading score (i.e., total reading) of the standardized measure [i.e., Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised-Normative Update (Woodcock, 1998)]. Statistically significant differences were also determined for all three curriculum-based measures (i.e., nonsense word fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, and oral reading fluency) of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacyeracy Skills (Good & Kaminski, 2002). Treatment effects were moderate to large in magnitude. Effect sizes ranged from 0.60 for both a curriculum-based measure of phonemic awareness and a standardized measure of reading comprehension to 0.87 for a curriculum-based measure of alphabetic principle. Implications, limitations, and areas for future research are discussed.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a cohesive and intensive preventive prereading intervention on the phonological awareness, word reading, and rapid naming skills of children at risk of emotional disturbance and reading problems.Thirty-six children were assigned randomly to an experimental or comparison condition. Children in the experimental condition received Stepping Stones to Literacyeracy. Stepping Stones includes 25 lessons designed to teach children pivotal prereading skills (e.g., phonological awareness, letter identification). Children in the experimental condition showed statistically significant improvements in their phonological awareness, word reading, and rapid naming skills relative to children in the comparison condition. Effect size estimates indicate that the improvements were moderate to large across all of the phonological awareness, word reading, and rapid naming measures. Treatment nonresponder analyses indicated that a relatively small number of children in the experimental group failed to show satisfactory gains in their phonological awareness (n = 3),word reading (n = 1), and rapid naming (n = 3) skills.
04/13/2021. Research Study
This monograph presents information about Reading Recovery, describes the latest research concerning the program, and summarizes practical experience concerning the implementation of this innovation in reading instruction. Chapter 1 presents a general description of Reading Recovery instructional procedures. Chapter 2 contains three case studies that provide a more concrete look at how the program works with individual children and teachers. Chapter 3 discusses a longitudinal study conducted in the Columbus Public Schools to determine both the short-range and the long-range effects of Reading Recovery on a group of at-risk students. Chapter 4 describes the studies of Reading Recovery at sites throughout the state of Ohio during the years of 1985-86, 1986-87, and 198-88. Chapter 5 describes the Reading Recovery staff development component, along with studies of teacher training and development in program techniques. Chapter 6 presents suggestions for school districts or state agencies that wish to implement Reading Recovery. Thirty-three references and three appendixes containing a list of books used in Reading Recovery, a description of the alternative intervention program employed during the first year of the longitudinal study, and measures used to assess children in the Reading Recovery Program are attached. (MS)
04/13/2021. Research Study
This randomized control trial examined the efficacy of an intervention aimed at improving multisyllabic word reading (MWR) skills among fourth- and fifth-grade struggling readers (n = 109, 48.6% male), as well as the relative effects of an embedded motivational beliefs training component. This study was a closely aligned replication of our earlier work. The intervention was replicated with a three-condition design: MWR only, MWR with a motivational beliefs component, and business-as-usual control. Students were tutored in small groups for 40 lessons (four 40-min lessons each week). When we combined performance of students in both MWR conditions, intervention students significantly outperformed controls on proximal measures of affix reading and MWR, as well as standardized measures of decoding, spelling, and text comprehension. Furthermore, there was a noted interaction between English learner status and treatment on spelling performance. There were no statistically significant main effects between the MWR groups on proximal or standardized measures of interest. Findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to MWR instruction for students with persistent reading difficulties and considerations for future research related to the malleability of motivation.
04/13/2021. Research Study
At-risk 1st graders were randomly assigned to tutoring in more or less decodable texts, and instruction in the same phonics program. The more decodable group (n = 39) read storybooks that were consistent with the phonics program. The less decodable group (n = 40) read storybooks written without phonetic control. During the first 30 lessons, storybook decodability was 85% versus 11% for the 2 groups. Tutoring occurred 4 days per week for 25 weeks. A control group did not receive tutoring in phonics or story reading. Both tutored groups significantly surpassed the control on an array of decoding, word reading, passage reading, and comprehension measures. However, the more and less decodable text groups did not differ on any posttest. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
04/13/2021. Research Study
04/13/2021. Research Study
For children with language challenges, little is known about effective early reading interventions, because most studies have used language scores as exclusionary criteria. We randomly assigned 78 kindergartners with poor language skills to small group reading interventions that included phonemic awareness, alphabetic understanding, and oral language. The groups began in September or mid-February. Nearly half the students were English learners. MANOVA between these groups found that earlier intervention led to significantly better outcomes than the same interventions begun later in kindergarten. We found similar rates of growth between students who were English only or English learners. Twice as many students in the immediate as in the delayed treatment scored in the average range at the end of the year. Pretests did not predict who would be a good or poor responder to the treatments; however, January scores in letter knowledge and phonemic awareness were reliably different for good and poor responders.
04/13/2021. Research Study
This study tested the efficacy of supplemental phonics instruction for 84 low-skilled language minority (LM) kindergarteners and 64 non-LM kindergarteners at 10 urban public schools. Paraeducators were trained to provide the 18-week (January–May) intervention. Students performing in the bottom half of their classroom language group (LM and non-LM) were randomly assigned either to individual supplemental instruction (treatment) or to classroom instruction only (control). Irrespective of their language status, treatment students (n = 67) significantly outperformed controls (n = 81) at posttest in alphabetics, word reading, spelling, passage reading fluency, and comprehension (average treatment d = 0.83); nevertheless, LM students tended to have lower posttest performance than non-LM students (average LM d = −0.30) and were significantly less responsive to treatment on word reading. When we examined the contribution of classroom phonics time to student outcomes, we found that the treatment effect on spelling was greater for students in lower phonics classrooms, whereas the treatment effect on comprehension was greater for those in higher phonics classrooms. Finally, when we examined LM students alone, we found that pretest English receptive vocabulary positively predicted most posttests and interacted with treatment only on phonological awareness. In general, pretest vocabulary did not moderate kindergarten LM treatment response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)