Teach Effectively!

The Best Evidence Encyclopedia made new reviews available recently.

Upper Elementary Reading Program Reviews Now Available

What reading programs have been proven to help students in grades 2-5 succeed? To find out, read this review. It summarizes the evidence on four types of programs that are designed to improve the reading achievement of students in grades 2-5, including:

Reading Curricula, including core reading textbooks such as Reading Street and Open Court, as well as supplementary texts like Read Naturally and Fluency Formula
Computer-Assisted Instruction, such as Jostens/Compass Learning and Accelerated Reader
Instructional Process Programs, such as cooperative learning and classroom management and motivation programs
Combined Curriculum and Instructional Process Programs, such as Direct Instruction, Wilson Reading, and Project Read

Obtain a copy of the full report (PDF) or the summary version.

The US What Works Clearninghouse is touting the revision of its Web site:

Explore the new, redesigned WWC website

New Tools and Information for Practitioners, Researchers, and Policymakers at whatworks.ed.gov

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) invites you to visit its newly improved website. New publications and features include:

* Quick reviews, a new series of publications that provide objective assessments of high-profile research studies and reports;
* New reports about educational interventions in the areas of dropout prevention, beginning reading, and early childhood education;
* New practice guides, the latest of which describes practical solutions for turning around chronically underperforming schools;
* Customizable ratings charts, which allow you to sort WWC findings by the categories most important to you.

The new website has a more user friendly navigation, more powerful capability to search for specific interventions, an expanded set of frequently asked questions and answers, a new glossary of research terms, and a document library that includes all the WWC’s user guides and research papers in one place.

Link to the WWC.

Two organizations interested in improving the quality of education in the US have joined together to solicit support for their efforts. The organizations—Great Schools, and ED in 08—created a quiz that challenges parents to take a quiz about their knowledge of math or science (or both) and compare their results to those of students in the US and other countries. They’re using it to promote their agenda that they dub “Strong American Schools.” The image at the right opens a pop-up window from Ed in 08 for you to take the quiz.

Links for the sponsors: Great Schools (“the parent’s guide to K-12 Education”; interesting that they used the singular possesive) and Ed in 08.

The Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of the Council for Exceptional Children holds a conference annually in late October or early November. This year it is in Philadelphia (PA, US) and it features a batch of presentations that promise to be helpful to teachers, coaches, and administrators interested in learning how to implement evidence-based instructional practices.

Check the agenda for the next Fall Conference 24 and 25 October 2008 and then register! Learn about DLD’s “Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice” and learn how you can participate in this outstanding professional development opportunity.

Please note that I am connected with DLD (long-time member, former president, currently executive director and co-editor of the Web site), but I’d be pushing this conference even if I wasn’t affiliated with it.

The Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA) education conference is to be held in Reston (VA, US) in just a few weeks. Although the presence of the word “behavior” in the organization’s name may lead one to expect the conference to focus on social behavior, that is not the case. There are many members who focus their work on academic outcomes. This is not just a meeting for people interested in Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, Autism, or discrete trial training.

After today, registration will only be possible at the site.

The last day to pre-register for ABA International’s 2008 Education Conference titled, “Evidence-Based Practice, Scientifically Based Instruction, and Educational Effectiveness” is this tomorrow, Wednesday, August 13th. The conference will be held on the second floor of the Hyatt Regency Reston, in Reston, Virginia near Washington D.C., during the weekend of September 5-7, 2008. After August 13th, registration will only be available on-site and will increase by $25. To pre-register for this conference, please visit http://www.abainternational.org/educonf/convreg/ .

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) published reports on two leading curricula for reading instruction in the US, Reading Mastery and Open Court Reading today. The reports essentially state that the research base for the two programs does not include studies that meet the WWC standards for evidence that can be used to assess effectiveness.

Reading Mastery is a full-year curriculum designed to provide systematic instruction in English language reading. The program teaches phonemic awareness, sound-letter correspondence, word and passage reading, vocabulary development, comprehension, and building oral reading fluency. Read the WWC’s Reading Mastery intervention report at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/rdgmastery/.

Open Court Reading© is an elementary basal reading program for grades K-6. The program is designed to follow a logical progression, systematically teaching decoding, comprehension, inquiry and investigation, and writing. The WWC’s Open Court Reading© intervention report is available at http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/open_court/.

Image of CMU home page

Over on LD Blog I posted an entry a couple of months ago about a study showing changes in brain function as a result of instruction. I’m noting it here because Carnegie Mellon University featured the study on its home page. The story is that Ann Meyers and her colleagues reported another study documenting how reading instruction affects learners’ brains. In this case, the research involved 100 hours of remedial instruction and the outcomes were improved comprehension.

Link to the entry on LD Blog. Link to the CMU Web page, part of which is pictured above. Link to the press release about the study.

Meyler, A., Keller, T. A., Cherkassky, V. L., & Just, M. A. (2008). Modifying the brain activation of poor readers during sentence comprehension with extended remedial instruction: A longitudinal study of neuroplasticity. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2580-2592.

Christina Samuels, who writes and blogs for Ed Week, has a story about grants from the US Department of Education to universities conducting teacher preparation programs. Here’s her lead:

The U.S. Department of Education has given grants to 20 universities to revamp their special education teacher-preparation programs, a step the department says is key to increasing the numbers of highly qualified teachers in that field.

Jump to Ms. Samuels’ story. Note that there’s a link to her blog, On Special Ed, in the blogroll.