Teach Effectively!

Robert Slavin and colleagues reported that reading programs that provide extensive professional development on instructional strategies which promote student participation, strengthen phonics competence, and explicitly teach comprehension strategies are the best bets for improving reading achievement. The clearest examples of the programs that led to the highest achievement were Direct Instruction and Success for All.

Writing in the December 2009 issue of the Review of Educational Research, Professor Slavin and colleagues reported the results of their examination of 142 studies. They wanted to determine whether curricula, technology, instructional processes, or combinations of curricula and processes produce greater reading achievement. The curriculum group included core reading programs, such as Reading Street and Open Court Reading. The technology group included programs that employ computers or similar methods such as computer-assisted instruction, multimedia (e.g., Reading Reels, or Writing to Read). The instructional process group included approaches that provide teachers effective strategies for teaching reading, such as Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) and Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC). The combined curriculum-and-instructional-process group included programs that function as core curricula and also provide detailed professional development about using instructional strategies, such as Direct Instruction and Success for All. The researchers separated the studies into two groups: those with outcomes at the (a) beginning reading level vs. upper elementary level.

In a nutshell, Slavin et al. found that this research literature “supports the use of well-developed programs that integrate curriculum, pedagogy, and extensive professional development” (p. 1426). This should come as little surpise to regular readers of Teach Effectively. Simply adopting a particular technique or a new basal will not yield the degree of improvement needed to substantially affect students’ achievement. Education needs to employ comprehensive, intergrated instructional programs that have been tested and refined.

Although Professor Slavin and colleagues do not explicitly state this, it’s pretty obvious to me that comprehensive programs such as DI and SFA should be at the core of coordinated, school-wide efforts to improve students’ outcomes. They do point out that these programs were not the ones adopted by most Reading First schools, and they suggest that this oversight might be responsible for the disappointing effects seen in the evaluation of Reading First’s impact. More relevant for present policy developments is that these are the programs that should be at the core of response-to-instruction (RtI) efforts. If your school is jumping into RtI, I hope it has adopted one of these programs.

One often hears the comment that there are no magic (or silver) bullets in education reform. That’s a truism. Simply putting a copy of Reading Mastery in every primary and elementary classroom will not cause achievement to increase. In that sense, SFA and DI are not magic bullets, either. The review by Professor Slavin and colleagues underscores the importance of comprehensive and thorough reform efforts, including powerful curricula, evidence-based instructional practices, and detailed professional development.

Here is the abstract for the review of Slavin et al. (who, by the way, appropriately note their connections with some of the programs examined in this review):

This article systematically reviews research on the achievement outcomes of four types of approaches to improving the reading success of children in the elementary grades: reading curricula, instructional technology, instructional process programs, and combinations of curricula and instructional process. Study inclusion criteria included use of randomized or matched control groups, a study duration of at least 12 weeks, valid achievement measures independent of the experimental treatments, and a final assessment at the end of Grade 1 or later. A total of 63 beginning reading (starting in Grades K or 1) and 79 upper elementary (Grades 2 through 5) reading studies met these criteria. The review concludes that instructional process programs designed to change daily teaching practices have substantially greater research support than programs that focus on curriculum or technology alone.

Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., Chambers, B., Cheung, A., & Davis, S. (2009). Effective reading programs for the elementary grades: A best-evidence synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 79, 1391–1466. DOI: 10.3102/0034654309341374