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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 The studies included in this report cover three domains: alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension.
Alphabetics. Torgesen et al. (2006) examined four outcomes in the phonics construct of the alphabetics domain—the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (WRMT–R) word identification and word attack subtests and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE) phonemic decoding efficiency and sight word efficiency subtests. The authors reported statistically significant effects of Kaplan SpellRead on two of these outcomes (the WRMT–R word attack subtest and the TOWRE decoding efficiency subtest). The statistical significance of these findings was consistent with the WWC calculation. The average effect size across the four outcomes was large enough to be considered substantively important according to WWC criteria (that is, an effect size of at least 0.25).
Rashotte, MacPhee, & Torgesen (2001) examined seven outcomes in the alphabetics domain—WRMT–R word identification and word attack subtests; the TOWRE phonetic decoding efficiency and sight word efficiency subtests; and the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP) elision, blending words, and segmenting words subtests. The authors reported statistically significant positive effects on six of the outcomes. However, the WWC analysis confirmed statistically significant differences for only four of the outcomes (WRMT–R word attack subtest, the TOWRE phonetic decoding efficiency subtest, and the CTOPP blending words and segmenting words subtests). The average effect size across all seven outcomes was statistically significant and positive.
Fluency. Torgesen et al. (2006) examined one outcome in this domain (the Oral Reading Fluency test) and reported no statistically significant effect. The effect size was not large enough to be considered substantively important.
Rashotte, MacPhee, & Torgesen (2001) examined two outcomes in the fluency domain and reported statistically significant positive effects for the outcomes (the Gray Oral Reading Tests (GORT–3) accuracy and rate subtests). However, none of those effects were statistically significant according to WWC analysis. The average effect size across the two outcomes was large enough to be considered substantively important.
Comprehension. Torgesen et al. (2006) examined two outcomes in this domain—the WRMT–R passage comprehension subtest and the GRADE passage comprehension subtest—and reported no statistically significant effects. The average effect size across the two outcomes was neither statistically significant nor large enough to be considered substantively important.
Rashotte, MacPhee, & Torgesen (2001) examined two outcomes in the comprehension domain—the Woodcock Diagnostic Reading Battery (WDRB) passage comprehension subtest and the GORT-3 comprehension subtest—and reported statistically significant effects for both outcomes. The statistical significance of these findings was consistent with the WWC calculation. The average effect size across the two outcomes was also statistically significant and positive.
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 Kaplan SpellRead, a correction for multiple comparisons was needed.
