Eleven studies reviewed by the WWC investigated the effects of CIRC®. Two studies (Bramlett, 1994; Skeans, 1991) were quasi-experimental designs that met WWC evidence standards with reservations. The remaining nine studies did not meet WWC evidence screens.
Bramlett (1994) included 392 third-graders from 18 classrooms in eight school districts in rural southern Ohio. CIRC® was implemented in the intervention classrooms as the core reading curriculum. 1 The comparison classrooms received their regular reading curriculum.
Skeans (1991) is a study of the third-grade classrooms in a suburban district of Houston, Texas. Twenty-four third-grade teachers were matched on students' achievement and other factors and assigned to two conditions. In all, 169 students in the intervention group used CIRC® for 18 weeks along with the integrated language arts, and 141 students in the comparison group experienced only the integrated language arts curriculum.
The WWC categorizes the extent of evidence in each domain as small or medium to large (see the What Works Clearinghouse Extent of Evidence Categorization Scheme). The extent of evidence takes into account the number of studies and the total sample size across the studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations. 2 The WWC considers the extent of evidence for CIRC® to be medium to large for comprehension. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed alphabetics, fluency, or general reading achievement.
|Institute of Education Sciences
