Teach Effectively!

The National Center for Education Evaluation released a report yesterday (28 January 2008) describing preliminary findings from an evaluation of the effects of two supplemental literacy programs focused on improving reading comprehension and school performance of ninth-grade students who have achievement problems. The report, “Enhanced Reading Opportunities: Early Impact and Implementation Findings,” describes the effects of Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy and Xtreme Reading on a group of students who begin high school reading two to five years below grade level.

Study Overview
Interventions: Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy and Xtreme Reading — supplemental literacy programs designed as full-year courses to replace a ninth-grade elective class. The programs were selected through a competitive applications process based on ratings by an expert panel.
Study sample: 2,916 ninth-grade students from 34 high schools and 10 school districts. Districts and schools were selected by ED’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education through a special Small Learning Communities Grant competition. Students were selected based on reading comprehension test scores that were between two and five years below grade level.
Research design: Within each district, high schools were randomly assigned to use either the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy program or the Xtreme Reading program. Within each high school, students were randomly assigned to enroll in the ERO class or to remain in a regularly scheduled elective class. A reading comprehension test and a survey were administered to students at the start of ninth grade prior to random assignment and at the end of ninth grade. Classroom observations in the second semester of the school year were used to measure implementation fidelity.
Outcomes: reading comprehension and vocabulary test scores, reading behaviors, student attendance in the ERO classes and other literacy support services, implementation fidelity.

The programs produced beneficial effects of students’ reading comprehension in comparison to students who did not participate in the programs. There were no statistically significant effects on students’ vocabulary or reading behaviors.

Although these are only preliminary findings (there will be other groups of students who will cycle through the programs) and the benefits are limited, it is encouraging to see the benefits. Literacy problems at this age are difficult to correct, but it’s good to know more about the extent to which they are tractable.

Here are links to various versions of the documents:

• The Executive Summary (881 KB PDF)
• The full report (2.35 MB PDF)
• The body of the report (1.18 MB PDF)
• The appendices and references (1.24 MB PDF)
  

Also, on this topic, see Interventions for Struggling Readers from the Center on Instruction and interventions information from the Florida Center for Reading Research.