Curricula Compared
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Reporting in the Journal of School Psychology, Elizabeth Crowe and colleagues recount the methods and results of a study of children’s reading growth during the primary grades. They placed special emphasis on questions about whether different core curricula result in different rates of growth and whether students from lower-SES backgrounds achieve more under one or another curriculum. Although the results of the study do not provide conclusive evidence that any one curricula trumps all others, they give glimpses of programs’ different effects.
In their study, Crowe et al. examined growth in “oral reading fluency” for 30,000 students in Florida (US) receiving instruction using six different core reading curricula during 1st-3rd grades. Generally, they found that almost 3/4ths of the variation in students’ scores was attributable to child factors, but the 1/4th attributable to other factors included differences in the curricula they experienced. They also found, of course, that children’s reading performance, as measured in words read correctly per minute, increased over the grades; however, the increases began to slow late in 3rd grade. In addition, they reported that students from lower-SES backgrounds had lower reading rates than their advantaged peers, but that curricula did not produce different rates of growth for low- versus high-SES students.
Still, when one examines the data closely, it becomes clear that Reading Mastery pretty consistently finishes in the top group at each grade level and on each way of examining the outcomes. Crow et al. note this finding in their discussion:
Overall, students in the Reading Mastery curriculum demonstrated generally greater overall ORF growth than students in other curricula. Also, they more frequently met or exceeded benchmarks for adequate achievement in first, second, and third grade. In first grade, regardless of SES status, students generally met adequate achievement benchmarks. Among second graders, on average, only students using Reading Mastery and Success for All met benchmarks, while the lowest scores for students were among those using Houghton Mifflin. In third grade, on average, students did not reach the adequate achievement benchmark. However, Reading Mastery students came closest to the benchmarks because scores among these students were the highest across curricula.
Here is the full abstract for the study:
Policy changes at the federal and state level are endeavoring to improve student achievement at schools serving children from lower-SES homes. One important strategy is the focus on using evidence-based core reading curricula to provide a consistent framework for instruction across schools. However, rarely have these curricula undergone rigorous comparative testing. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the effects of six core reading curricula on oral reading fluency growth, while appraising whether these effects differ by grade level and for children living in lower (SES) households. Over 30,000 students in first through third grade Florida Reading First classrooms comprise this academically and economically diverse cross-sectional. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to model latent growth curves for students’ reading fluency scores over the school year. Growth curves revealed differences across curricula as well as between students of lower and higher SES, suggesting that reading fluency growth trajectories for curricula varied depending on student SES and grade level. Findings indicate that while there are similarities among curricula, they sometimes differ in their ability to promote reading skill growth. Differences by grade level and SES were also detected. However, many of these differences were small. Implications for the use of curriculum as a conduit for improving reading instruction are discussed.
Crowe, E. C., Connor, C. M., & Perscher, Y. (2009). Examining the core: Relations among reading curricula, poverty, and first through third grade reading achievement. Journal of School Psychology, 47, 187-214.
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It’s a shame the original Open Court Reading and Writing and Lippincott Basic Reading are no longer published. I use both in my SPED classroom. Someone should buy the rights to either program and you would have an effective reading curricula. Check out what Diane McGuinness has to say (with data to back it up-Lippincott) about the programs.
This study does not answer the question of the possibility of NOT using a reading curricula. What about schools that do not enforce the use of a specific reading programs and therefore teachers are allowed to use their own discretion. For example, some use parts of a reading series and supplement with trade books and guided reading books! It would be an interesting study but difficult to monitor?
This is all very nice but Reading Mastery was also proven the hands-down curriculum winner way back in 1977, at the end of what is still the largest educational study ever performed (Project Follow-Through – look it up). The education establishment doesn’t like systematic, effective curricula, and so it wasn’t interested in the results back then and it still isn’t interested today. Until we basically eliminate the malefactors who run our public school system (which will require the elimination of the system itself), we can waste all the time and money in the world running studies showing what works, and it all will be for naught because the non-fashionable curricula will never be used no matter how well they work. Meanwhile, all our tax dollars will go to fund the Looney Tunes materials that teachers have been using in their classrooms for the past 70 years: look-say, whole language, balanced literacy, whatever you want to call it. Too bad the American public doesn’t care or know enough to sweep this all away.
@SJ: thanks for the reminder about Lippincott. I remember it well. For its time, it was pretty good medicine. But, it didn’t expressly teach phonemic awareness and sounding out skills. I suspect that in a horse race with a couple of programs examined in the Florida study, it would finish out of the money. But, that’s speculation.
@Sally Doran: It would be interesting to study the effects of idiopathic approach (also doing business as Every-Teacher-Knows-Best Method, or ETKB for short). And, you’re right, it would be hard to study. I doubt that taking a little of this from and a little of that from sundry programs and mixing this and that with a liberal dose of tradebooks would be any match of a conceptually integrated core program that had been field-tested and revised on the basis of results with 1000s of learners. A study I’d like to see would be one that examined the perspectives of experienced advocates of ETKB when they are required to teach a class of kindergarteners from, say, Reading Mastery by the book (i.e., with high fidelity); I suspect that by January of their first year they would be saying things like, “I’ve never seen kids learn to read so fast.”
@David Ziffer: As frequently as I cite the Follow Through study as showing the benefits of DI, I have to note that this study is a bit different. This study compares specific reading curricula on a limited dependent variable. Some of the reading curricula examined in this study are much more advanced than those used by many of the models in FT. In fact, a systematic examination of them probably would reveal the influence of DISTAR on the other curricula in this study. That RM had effects in this study is, at least in part, a tribute to the continuing efforts by its developers to refine the program; there are still differences despite the imitation apparent in some of the competitors.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Anyone who has been teaching as long as I have, in the Public Schools will tell you that the choice of reading curriculum matters. Unfortunately this study did not include one of the best reading programs on the market called Sing, Spell, Read & Write. This program using music to enhance it’s carefully designed 36-step program, it’s 37 years old and still incredibly powerful and considered innovative. Here in NYC, another grand experiment went south because they failed to use research based curriculum in the schools instead they chose the “feel-good” “Teacher’s College Model” designed by Lucy Caulkins. The only one who benefited was Lucy herself who made millions on the deal, the kids once again got the short end of the stick.
In reference to Sally Doran’s comment: in general, I am in favour of giving teachers the freedom to use the methods which they like best. It’s a lot better than having a method forced down your throat. But in regards to teaching basic decoding skills, the evidence considered by England’s Rose Review was pretty firm: fidelity of implementation to published materials correlated highly with good results.
To a large extent, this is because the three-cue system which has been promoted extensively in teacher-training both here and the US is so clearly counter-productive, especially with slow readers. Reading Mastery was designed to eliminate this kind of teaching, and that’s why it works well.
The Rose Review was, by American standards, extremely radical. It’s nothing short of a miracle that a consensus is now building up that the strict synthetic-phonics approach that it endorses really can work wonders. But once you free yourself from the idea that decoding and comprehension form an indivisible whole, it becomes far easier to focus on the direct teaching of basic decoding skills–very much as Reading Mastery does. Also, the Rose Review discounts the importance of phonemic awareness training. Children taught with a good synthetic phonics programme acquire PA with no effort; this was established by an Austrian study by Heinz Wimmer.
Unfortunately, our government has blundered by writing its own synthetic phonics programme, Letters and Sounds. Although schools are still free to use any of the excellent commercial programmes that have been developed in the UK and elsewhere, 60% of our primary schools have been coerced into using Letters and Sounds. In other words, it won’t do your career any harm if you follow govt advice. However, teachers aren’t going to implement it very enthusiastically if they feel they’ve been pressured into using it.
Ironically, this has helped us enormously. We publish a range of synthetic phonics programme for slow readers, and the relatively high failure rates that persist in Letters and Sounds schools have created quite a good market for us. Since no one has to buy our books, the schools that do are generally quite enthusiastic about them, and they get excellent results.
It is clear by reading all of the responses that we have way to many options for teaching word study skills. We know what works, use it. The comment about having a program “shoved down your throat” needs a reply. It’s not about you, it’s about the students. Teachers need to understand that. It is possible to keep your “poetic license” and still teach kids to read.
This study ONLY uses the measure of oral fluency growth and while that is one indication of reading success there is a much more important and integral component of true reading success. That is UNDERSTANDING what one has read. Many children can read words fluently but do they make meaning? THAT is reading. The three cueing systems of reading are tried and true with much research to support them. To call what we know reading to be TODAY as nothing more than a ‘feel good’ approach is detrimental to all who aspire to help children develop into lifelong READERS. Let’s not go back to developing word callers. Should we say that Ken Goodman, Marie Clay, Ellin Oliver Keene, Susan Zimmerman, Peter Johnston, Richard Allington, among others got it completely wrong?
Jackie, thanks very much for visiting TE and taking the time to drop a comment. I agree that reading with understanding is what I, too, hope people do and is a consequence of reading instruction. The study discussed in this post does use only a words-per-minute measure, which (to me) doesn’t adequately measure fluency (it omits prosody and understanding), so this study isn’t the definitive statement. However, given the high correlations between words-per-minute measures and reading comprehension measures, WPM is a pretty good proxy for comprehension (see Fuchs, Fuchs, & Maxwell, 1988; Good & Jefferson, 1998 for more).
Also, I have some hesitation about the concept of “word callers.” I have met a few children who could read text that they couldn’t understand, even if the text was read to them fluently. We might say they’re “word callers,” but it seems to me that the limitation on their understanding is not about their decoding ability, but their general comprehension ability. Also, Hamilton and Shinn (2003) found that children identified as “word callers” read more slowly and without comprehension than their peers who aren’t identified as word callers.
There are some pretty serious indictments of the three-cue view, as you probably know. Marilyn Adams published pretty thorough one a few years ago. So, who’s got research showing superior outcomes for students taught via three-cues—especially research that compares teaching three-cue systems vs. teaching other methods and assess students’ reading performance? I’d like to review those references.
Last: I’m not sure who called “what we know reading to be TODAY as nothing more than a ‘feel good’ approach.” Please let me know who’s saying that.
Adams, M. (1998). The three-cueing systems. In J. Osborn & F.Lehr (Eds.), Literacy for all: Issues in teaching and learning (pp.73-99). New York: Guilford.
Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., & Maxwell, L. (1988). The validity of informal reading comprehension measures. Remedial & Special Edcuation, 9(2), 20-27.
Good, R. H., & Jefferson, G. (1998). Contemporary perspecitives on curriculum-based measurement validity. In M. R. Shinn (Ed.), Advanced applications of Curriculum-based measurement (pp. 61-88). New York: Guilford.
Hamilton, C., & Shinn, M. (2003). Characteristics of Word Callers: An investigation of the accuracy of teachers’ judgments of reading comprehension and oral reading skills. School Psychology Review, 32, 228-240.
I am currently homeschooling my three children- all with special needs and diagnosed reading/writing disabilities…I am using reading mastery and my children are doing fantastic with it. As a former teacher I have to say that I am impressed with the systematic way they are learning…I am not super excited to “read the script” but it is working and why mess with what works!
I had a team meeting the other day and not one of the school people knew about reading mastery…and they were not very interested in hearing about it either….big sigh…
-Jo
I have received a small start-up grant to do a reading program with 12 rising fourth graders from our local elementary school which is located in a very low SES with equally low reading success. Any ideas for curriculum for this 10 week program?
Debbie, great question!
Whatever you do for a curriculum, please remember to start right away with implementing a system for monitoring progress. Track whether the students are getting better with decoding tough words, fluency with connected text, and understanding what they are reading. These data will allow you to make adjustments in their instruction as well as communicate clearly to parents and administrators about the students’ acquisition of greater skills.
As for a curriculum, please understand that I’m not in the business of selling any. I don’t want to suggest something that will not fit with your situation (e.g., group size, range of skill at the beginning of the time period, etc.). Even more, I doubt that 10 weeks is long enough to make much of a dent in the reading of 9-11 year olds.
Still you should look for something that’s got strong evidence (check the Florida Center for Reading Research for reviews of curricula). Stick with it faithfully (no free-lancing!). And, please, let us know how things go.
Congrats on getting the funding to help these students.