Study: 87633

Grant Competition

Review Details

Reviewed: December 2019

At least one finding shows moderate evidence of effectiveness

At least one statistically significant positive finding

Meets WWC standards with reservations

For:

Grant Competition (findings for Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC))

Using:

Rating:

Meets WWC standards with reservations because it uses a quasi-experimental design in which the analytic intervention and comparison groups satisfy the baseline equivalence requirement.

This review may not reflect the full body of research evidence for this intervention.

Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.

Findings

General academic achievement (middle school) outcomes—Statistically significant positive effect found for the domain
Outcome measure	Comparison	Sample	Intervention mean	Comparison mean	Significant?	Improvement index
Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) Reading	Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) vs. Business as usual	Full sample; 16,149 students	N/A	N/A	Yes	2
Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) Writing (eighth grade)	Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) vs. Business as usual	Full sample; 13,972 students	N/A	N/A	No	--
Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress (K-PREP) Social Studies (eighth grade)	Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) vs. Business as usual	Full sample; 19,962 students	N/A	N/A	No	--

Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.

Sample Characteristics

Characteristics of study sample as reported by study author.

0% English language learners
Female: 49%
Male: 51%
- B
- A
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- I
- H
- J
- K
- L
- P
- M
- N
- O
- Q
- R
- S
- V
- U
- T
- W
- X
- Z
- Y
- a
- h
- i
- b
- d
- e
- f
- c
- g
- j
- k
- l
- m
- n
- o
- p
- q
- r
- s
- t
- u
- v
- x
- w
- y
Kentucky

Race
Asian		1%
Black		4%
White		92%

Ethnicity
Hispanic		2%
Not Hispanic or Latino		98%

Study Details

Setting

This study was implemented with 36 eighth-grade social studies and science teachers and their students in 11 Kentucky school districts.

Study sample

There were 36 eighth-grade social studies and science teachers and their students in 11 Kentucky school districts in the study. There were over 2,200 students in the intervention group and other 13,000 in the comparison group (these numbers varied by outcome). About half of the sample was female and 90 percent were white. Hispanic and black youth made up about 5 percent of the sample. There were very few English language learners (less than 1 percent), and about 9 percent of the sample qualified for special education.

Intervention Group

The purpose of the Literary Design Collaborative (LDC) is to support the transition of teachers and students in Kentucky to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts. It attempts to do this by providing flexible module templates that enable teachers to integrate reading, research, and writing standards into their content-area instruction. There are extended writing tasks at the end of the modules, which "provide the heart of the approach." Teachers can use templates to design content-oriented tasks for the students. Teachers in the intervention group were required to implement at least two modules during an academic year.

Comparison Group

The comparison group was a business as usual group.

Support for implementation

Teachers in the participated in two to three professional development sessions during the study year.

The Implementation and Effects of the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC): Early Findings in Sixth-Grade Advanced Reading Courses. CRESST Report 846