Student Enrollment and Attendance in the ERO Classes and Participation in Literacy Support Activities

The study team collected data on the frequency with which students attended the ERO classes and participated in other classes or tutoring services that aimed to improve their reading and writing skills.

The ERO classes began an average of six weeks after the start of the school year and operated for an average of seven and a half months of the nine-month school year. More than 95 percent of the students randomly assigned to the ERO group enrolled in the ERO classes, and 91 percent were still attending the classes at the end of the school year.

• Students in the ERO group attended 83 percent of the scheduled ERO classes, and they received an average of just over 11 hours of ERO instruction per month. Attendance rates were similar for schools using Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy (82 percent) and for those using Xtreme Reading (84 percent).
• Students who were randomly assigned to the study's ERO group reported a higher frequency of participation in supplemental literacy services than students who were assigned to the non-ERO group.

The ERO classes served as the primary source of literacy support services for students in the study sample. Although the largest difference in use of supplemental literacy supports between the study's ERO and non-ERO groups occurred in students' attendance in school-based literacy class, ERO students were also more likely to report attending a literacy class outside school and working with a tutor in and outside school. According to the student survey, students in the ERO group reported that they attended an average of 52 more school-based class sessions during the year that focused on reading or writing, compared with students in the non-ERO group. Depending on a school's scheduling structure, classes meet between 90 and 180 times per year. Students in the ERO group were also more likely to report attending these types of classes outside school (an average of 3 more sessions reported during the year, compared with the non-ERO group). Finally, students in the ERO group were more likely to report working on their reading and writing with a tutor (an average of 17 more sessions for the year, compared with the non-ERO group). Each of these differences is statistically significant.

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