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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. 8 The study included in this Wilson Reading System® report covers three domains: alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension. Within the alphabetics domain, the study reported on one construct: phonics.
Alphabetics. Torgesen et al. (2006) analyzed the group differences on four phonics outcomes in the alphabetics domain (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test–Revised (WRMT–R) word identification and word attack subtests and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE) phonetic decoding efficiency and sight word efficiency subtests). The authors reported statistically significant effects of the Wilson Reading System® on two of these outcomes (WRMT–R word identification and word attack subtests). The statistical significance of these findings was confirmed by the WWC. The average effect size across the three outcomes was large enough to be considered substantively important according to WWC criteria (that is, an effect size at least 0.25).
Fluency. Torgesen et al. (2006) examined the effect of the intervention on one outcome in this domain (the Oral Reading Fluency test). They reported no statistically significant differences between groups for the outcome.
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.
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,9 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).
9 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 Wilson Reading System®, corrections for multiple comparisons were needed.
