Effectiveness

Findings

The WWC review of interventions for beginning reading addresses student outcomes in four domains: alphabetics, fluency, comprehension, and general reading achievement. ⁶ The Torgesen et al. (2003) study addressed outcomes in the alphabetics and comprehension domains. The findings below present the authors' and the WWC-calculated estimates of the size and statistical significance of the effects of Read, Write & Type!™ on students' performance.

Alphabetics. The Torgesen et al. (2003) study findings for alphabetics are based on the performance of Read, Write & Type!™ students and comparison students on three measures of phonological awareness and two measures of phonics.

• When the Read, Write & Type!™ group was compared with the Auditory Discrimination in Depth® group, the study authors found that there were no statistically significant differences between the groups on any of the three phonological awareness measures (phoneme blending, phoneme elision, and phoneme segmenting subtests of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processes) or the two phonics measures (word attack and word identification subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test).
  
• When the Read, Write & Type!™ group was compared with the regular classroom instruction/support group, the authors reported, and the WWC confirmed, statistically significant positive effects of Read, Write & Type!™ on one of the phonological awareness measures (phoneme segmenting) and on one of the phonics measures (word attack). The authors did not find statistically significant effects of the program on the second phonics measure (word identification) or on the other two phonological awareness measures (phoneme blending and elision).

In the alphabetics domain, one study with a strong design met WWC evidence standards. It showed statistically significant positive effects for one comparison group and no effects for the other, so the intervention was categorized as having potentially positive effects on alphabetics.

Comprehension. The Torgesen et al. (2003) study examined comprehension using the passage comprehension subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test and an estimated verbal IQ measure (based on the vocabulary subtest of the Stanford Binet Intelligence test).

• When the Read, Write & Type!™ group was compared with the Auditory Discrimination in Depth® group, the authors reported no statistically significant difference between the groups on the comprehension measures.
  
• When the Read, Write & Type!™ group was compared with the regular classroom instruction/support group, the authors reported no statistically significant difference between the groups on the comprehension measures.

In the comprehension domain, one study with a strong design met WWC evidence standards. Neither of the two comparisons showed statistically significant effects. The average effect size across the two comparisons was also not statistically significant and was not large enough to be considered substantively important according to WWC criteria. Therefore, the intervention was categorized as having no discernible effects on comprehension.

Rating of effectiveness

The WWC rates the effectiveness 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).

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