What is this study about?

This study examined whether supplemental literacy classes improve the reading skills of struggling ninth-grade readers.

Over 2,000 students from 34 high schools in 10 school districts participated in the study.

Each participating high school was assigned to use one of two supplemental literacy programs: Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy or Xtreme Reading.

Within each school, students were randomly assigned to enroll in either a supplementary reading class or one of the school’s other regularly offered elective classes.

The research groups were compared at the end of the school year on standardized tests of reading comprehension and vocabulary.

What did the study authors report?

The study authors found that the supplemental literacy classes led to a statistically significant increase in student test scores for reading comprehension. The intervention did not affect vocabulary test scores, however.

The effect size for comprehension was 0.08, equivalent to moving a student from the 50th to 53rd percentile.