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Success for All (SFA)® is a whole-school reform model that includes a reading, writing, and oral language development program for students in prekindergarten through eighth grade. Classroom reading instruction is delivered in daily 90-minute blocks to students grouped by reading ability. Immediate intervention with tutors who are certified teachers is given each day to those students who are having difficulty reading at the same level as their classmates.
This intervention report focuses on the reading component of SFA®, which is often implemented in the context of the SFA® whole-school reform program. Although the whole-school reform program has key components that are implemented in each school, school sites may vary considerably in the number of personnel used to implement SFA®, particularly tutors and family support staff. The reading curricula are essentially the same at all schools, with each school receiving the same training, coaching support, and materials. Ratings presented in this report are not disaggregated by the variations in implementation of whole-school reforms.
One study of SFA® meets the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards and six studies meet WWC evidence standards with reservations. Altogether, the studies included nearly 4,000 students attending more than 70 elementary schools across the United States. The seven studies focused on students in grades K–3 who received the SFA® intervention for varying amounts of time.4
Based on these seven studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for SFA® to be medium to large for alphabetics, comprehension, and general reading achievement. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed fluency.
Success for All® was found to have positive effects on alphabetics, mixed effects for comprehension, and potentially positive effects on general reading achievement.
| Alphabetics | Fluency | Comprehension | General reading achievement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | Positive effects | na | Mixed effects | Potentially positive effects |
| Improvement index5 | Average: +13 percentile points Range: 0 to +32 percentile points |
na | Average: +8 percentile points Range: 0 to +17 percentile points |
Average: +10 percentile points Range: +2 to +19 percentile points |
| na = not applicable | ||||
1 This report has been updated to include reviews of 19 studies that have been identified since 2006 and to incorporate the results of a reexamination of the Madden et al. (1993) study included in the previous version of this report, described in footnote 8. Of the additional studies, 15 are not within the scope of the protocol and 4 are within the scope of the protocol but do not meet evidence standards. A complete list and disposition of all studies reviewed are provided in the references.
2 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from a publicly available source: the program’s website (www.successforall.net, downloaded February 23, 2009). The WWC requests developers to review the program description sections for accuracy from their perspective. Further verification of the accuracy
of the descriptive information for this program is beyond the scope of this review.
3 The studies in this report were reviewed using WWC Evidence Standards, Version 1.0 (see the WWC Standards).
4 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
5 These numbers show the average and range of improvement indices for all findings across the studies.
|Institute of Education Sciences
