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Effectiveness
Findings
The WWC review of interventions for beginning reading addresses student outcomes in four domains: alphabetics, fluency, comprehension, and general reading achievement. 6 Torgesen et al. (2006) addressed three domains: alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension.
Alphabetics. Torgesen et al. (2006) examined four phonics outcomes in the alphabetics domain (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (WRMT–R): Word Identification and Word Attack subtests and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE): Phonetic Decoding Efficiency and Sight Word Efficiency subtests). The authors reported that Failure Free Reading did not have a statistically significant effect on any of the four outcomes. The average effect size across the three outcomes was neither statistically significant nor large enough to be considered substantively important according to the WWC criteria (that is, an effect size of least 0.25).
Fluency. Torgesen et al. (2006) examined one outcome in this domain (the Oral Reading Fluency test) and reported no statistically significant effect for this outcome. The effect size was not large enough to be considered substantively important.
Comprehension. Torgesen et al. (2006) examined two outcomes in this domain (WRMT–R: Passage Comprehension subtest and Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE): Passage Comprehension subtest) and reported no statistically significant effects. The average effect size across the two outcomes was large enough to be considered substantively important.
Rating of effectiveness
The WWC rates the effects of an intervention in a given outcome domain as positive, potentially positive, mixed, no discernible effects, potentially negative, or negative. The rating of effectiveness takes into account four factors: the quality of the research design, the statistical significance of the findings,7 the size of the difference between participants in the intervention and the comparison conditions, and the consistency in findings across studies (see the WWC Intervention Rating Scheme).
7 The level of statistical significance was reported by the study authors or, where necessary, calculated by the WWC to correct for clustering within classrooms or schools and for multiple comparisons. For an explanation, see the WWC Tutorial on Mismatch. See the Technical Details of WWC-Conducted Computations for the formulas the WWC used to calculate the statistical significance. In the case of Failure Free Reading, corrections for multiple comparisons were needed.
