- Acknowledgments
- Executive Summary
- The Supplemental Literacy Interventions
- The ERO Evaluation
- First-Year Implementation
- Student Enrollment and Attendance in the ERO Classes and Participation in Literacy Support Activities
- Early Impact Findings
- First-Year Implementation Challenges and Early Impacts
- Next Steps for the ERO Study
- References
- Tables & Figures
PDF & Related Info
The ERO Evaluation
The supplemental literacy programs are being implemented in 34 high schools from 10 school districts across the country. The districts were selected through a special grant competition organized by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE). Experienced, full-time English/language arts or social studies teachers were self-selected and approved by ED, the districts, and the schools to teach the programs for a period of two years.
The ERO evaluation utilizes a two-level random assignment research design. First, within each district, eligible high schools were randomly assigned to use one of the two supplemental literacy programs: 17 of the high schools were assigned to use Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy, and 17 schools were selected to use Xtreme Reading.
The second feature of the study design involves the random assignment of eligible and appropriate students within each of the participating high schools. During the first year of the study, the participating high schools identified an average of 85 ninth-grade students who were reading at least two years below grade level. Approximately 55 percent of these students were randomly assigned to enroll in the ERO class, and the remaining students make up the study's control group and were enrolled in or continued in a regularly scheduled elective class. The first cohort of the study sample includes 2,916 ninth-grade students with baseline test scores indicating that they were reading between the fourth- and seventh-grade levels.
Evaluation data were collected with the Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Examination (GRADE) reading comprehension and vocabulary tests and a survey.2 Both instruments were administered to students at two points during the ninth-grade year: a baseline assessment and survey at the start of ninth grade and a follow-up assessment and survey at the end of ninth grade. Follow-up test scores and surveys are available for 2,413 (83 percent) of the students in the study sample. To learn about the fidelity of program implementation, the study also included observations of the supplemental literacy classes during the second semester of the school year.
2 American Guidance Service, Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation: Teacher's Scoring and Interpretive Manual, Level H; and Technical Manual (Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service, 2001a, 2001b).