Next Steps for the ERO Study

The early impact findings discussed in this report do not represent conclusive evidence about the efficacy or effectiveness of the supplemental literacy interventions being tested. The next report from the ERO study will provide evidence on the impact of the supplemental literacy programs during the second year of implementation. A critical goal of the second year of the implementation has been to build on the experiences of the ERO teachers and the program developers to address the start-up challenges that arose in the first year. Twenty-seven of the 34 teachers who taught the ERO classes in the first year of the study returned for the second year. These teachers participated in a second summer training institute and continued to learn more about how to use the instructional strategies that lie at the heart of the two interventions. The seven new teachers participated in extensive training to help them begin teaching the class with as much fidelity to the model's specifications as possible and have received coaching throughout the year. A second cohort of ninth-grade students entered the study sample in the 2006-2007 school year. Most of the students in the ERO group from this cohort began their enrollment in the ERO classes at or near the start of the school year.

The ultimate goal of the two ERO programs is to improve students' academic performance during high school and to keep them on course toward graduation. With this in mind, the final report from the evaluation will examine the impact of the programs on student performance in their core academic classes, their grade-to-grade promotion rates, and their performance on high-stakes tests required by their states. The final report will present impacts on these outcomes through the eleventh grade for students in the study's first cohort and through the tenth grade for students in the second cohort.