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Intervention: Stepping Stones to Literacy

Effectiveness


Findings

The WWC review of interventions for beginning reading addresses student outcomes in four domains: alphabetics, fluency, comprehension, and general reading achievement. Both studies reviewed for this WWC intervention report addressed outcomes for constructs in the alphabetics domain. 6

Alphabetics: The Nelson, Benner, & Gonzalez (2005) study findings for alphabetics are based on the performance of SSL students and comparison students on:

  • Three measures of phonological awareness (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP): Phonological Awareness subtest and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS): Phoneme Segmentation Fluency and Initial Sound Fluency subtests).
  • One measure of letter knowledge (DIBELS: Letter Naming Fluency subtest).
  • One measure of phonics (DIBELS: Nonsense Words Fluency subtest).

The authors found and the WWC confirmed statistically significant positive effects of SSL on all outcomes.

The Nelson, Stage, Epstein, & Pierce (2005) study findings for alphabetics are based on the performance of SSL and comparison students on:

  • One measure of phonological awareness (CTOPP: Phonological Awareness subtest).
  • One measure of letter knowledge (DIBELS: Letter Naming Fluency subtest).
  • Two measures of phonics (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised: Word Identification and Word Attack subtests).

The authors found and the WWC confirmed statistically significant positive effects of SSL on all outcomes.

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).

6 For definitions of the domains and constructs, see the Beginning Reading Protocol.
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 SSL no corrections for clustering or multiple comparisons were needed.