The Effects of the Content Literacy Continuum on Adolescent Students' Reading Comprehension and Academic Achievement
Key outcomes and measures
The primary outcomes are student reading skills and student achievement in core subject areas. Program impact will be assessed using student performance on the Group Reading Assessment Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE) and on state achievement tests, course grades, and course-taking patterns. The contrast between GRADE scores in intervention and control schools will provide a direct test of impact on student literacy. Student transcripts and report card data from school records will be used to measure student achievement in core content area classes. Ancillary analyses will examine the effects of CLC on other student-level outcomes, such as performance on state assessments, attendance rates, and course-taking patterns. A secondary outcome is increased literacy-focused instruction in the classroom, and this instruction will be captured using a classroom observation tool that records the types and amount of reading-related activities in the classroom (such as prereading, vocabulary, text-level comprehension, and comprehension strategies). Observation data from teachers in intervention schools will be compared with observation data from teachers in control schools to determine whether teachers in intervention schools provide more literacy-focused instruction.