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What Works Clearinghouse


Overview1

The Voyager Universal Literacy System® is a core reading program designed to help students learn to read at or above grade level by the end of the third grade. This program uses strategies such as individual reading instruction, higher-level comprehension activities, problem solving, and writing. Students are also exposed to computer-based practice and reinforcement in phonological skills, comprehension, fluency, language development, and writing. The program uses whole classroom, small group, and independent group settings. Voyager Universal Literacy System® emphasizes regular assessments, with biweekly reviews for struggling students and quarterly assessments for all students.

Research

Two studies of Voyager Universal Literacy System® met WWC evidence standards with reservations. The two studies included over 600 kindergarten students from Florida, Ohio, and Washington, DC. 2 The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Voyager Universal Literacy System® to be medium to large for alphabetics and small for comprehension. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed fluency or general reading achievement.

Effectiveness

Voyager Universal Literacy System® was found to have potentially positive effects on alphabetics and potentially negative effects on comprehension.

Alphabetics Fluency Comprehension General reading achievement
Rating of effectiveness Potentially positive effects na Potentially negative effects na
Improvement index3 Average: +11 percentile points
Range: -8 to +27 percentile points
na Average: -25 percentile points na
na = not applicable
1 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from publicly available sources: the program's website (www.voyagerlearning.com; downloaded April 2007) and the research literature (Frechtling, Zhang, & Silverstein, 2006). 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.
2 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
3 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the studies.

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