Evaluation of Reading Comprehension Programs

Contractor: Mathematica Policy Research; RG Research Group; RMC Research Corp.

Background/Research Questions:

The Title I, Part A program is intended to help ensure that all children have the opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach proficiency on challenging state standards and assessments. As the largest federal program supporting elementary and secondary education, these resources are targeted primarily to high-poverty districts and schools. There are increasing cognitive demands on students' knowledge when they begin reading to learn rather than learning to read. There are multiple techniques for direct instruction of comprehension skills in narrative text that are well-demonstrated in small studies. However, there is not much research on teaching reading comprehension within content areas such as social studies or science. The study examined:

• What are the most effective reading comprehension programs for improving student reading achievement in either social studies or science?
• Under what conditions and practices do reading comprehension interventions improve student achievement in reading in either social studies or science?

Design:

The evaluation questions are being addressed by an experimental design in which 89 schools within ten districts were randomly assigned to one of four competitively-selected reading comprehension programs or to a control group using the usual school reading program. The reading comprehension curricula being evaluated were competitively selected, and are appropriate for funding under Title I. Four programs were implemented in 5th grade classrooms during the 2006–07 school year: ReadAbout (Scholastic), Reading for Knowledge (Success for All), Project CRISS, and Read for Real (Zane-Bloser).

Cost/Duration: $17,665,141 over 5 1/2 years (September 2004–June 2010)

Current Status:

A report on the 2006–07 school year was released on May 4, 2009. The final report was released in May 2010.

Key Findings:

No positive impacts of the curricula on student reading comprehension were found in the study's first year; however, students in schools using the Reading for Knowledge curriculum scored statistically significantly lower than control group students. Key findings after two years of using the curricula include:

• There was a positive, statistically significant impact of ReadAbout on social studies reading comprehension when teachers used it for a second year. This reading program teaches students comprehension skills using a computer program that adapts to each student's reading level. The program also allowed for easier integration of small-group instruction and provided immediate feedback to students.
• The impacts on fifth-grade reading comprehension were not statistically significantly different from zero for the other two other curricula, Read for Real and Project CRISS, when used by schools for a second year.