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Overview1
Program Description2
Literacy Express is a preschool curriculum designed for three- to five-year-old children. It is structured around units on oral language, emergent literacy, basic math, science, general knowledge, and socioemotional development. It can be used in half- or full-day programs with typically developing children and children with special needs. It provides professional development opportunities for staff; teaching materials; suggested activities; and recommendations for room arrangement, daily schedules, and classroom management.
Research3
Three studies of Literacy Express that fall within the scope of the Early Childhood Education review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The three studies include 1,004 preschool children from three to five years of age from 70 preschools in Florida and California.4
Based on these three studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Literacy Express on preschool children to be medium to large for oral language, print knowledge, and phonological processing and small for cognition and math. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of Literacy Express on preschool children in the early reading and writing domain.
Effectiveness
Literacy Express was found to have positive effects on oral language, print knowledge, and phonological processing and no discernible effects on cognition and math for preschool children.
| Oral language | Print knowledge | Phonological processing | Early reading/ writing | Cognition | Math | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating of effectiveness | Positive effects | Positive effects | Positive effects | na | No discernible effects | No discernible effects |
| Improvement index5 | Average: +12 percentile points Range: –2 to +23 percentile points |
Average: +15 percentile points Range: +2 to +24 percentile points |
Average: +12 percentile points Range: +6 to +21 percentile points |
na |
Average: +1 percentile point Range: –5 to +5 percentile points |
Average: 0 percentile points Range: –1 to +2 percentile points |
| na = not applicable | ||||||
Absence of conflict of interest
The PCER Consortium (2008) study summarized in this intervention report had numerous contributors, including staff of Mathematica Policy Research. Because the principal investigator for the WWC Early Childhood Education review is also a Mathematica staff member, the study was rated by Chesapeake Research Associates, which also prepared the intervention report. The report was then reviewed by the principal investigator, a WWC Quality Assurance reviewer, and an external peer reviewer.
1 This report has been updated to include a review of two studies that were released since 2007. These studies are within the scope of the protocol and meet evidence standards. The findings described in the previous Literacy Express intervention report were based, in part, on studies by Lonigan (2005, 2006). A review of those studies for the present report revealed that they were based on a second cohort of children from a randomly assigned set of preschools. Since children entered the preschools after random assignment, the initial equivalence of the treatment and control groups must be established. Tests of the equivalence of the analysis samples conducted by Lonigan showed statistically significant differences between the Literacy Express group and the control group on 5 of 11 outcome measures. Hence, results from the Lonigan (2005, 2006) studies were not considered when preparing the present intervention report. A complete list and disposition of all studies reviewed are provided in the references.
2 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from publicly available sources: the research literature (Lonigan, Farver, Clancy-Menchetti, & Phillips, 2005) and from the developer as part of the WWC's standard developer contact process. 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. The literature search reflects documents publicly available by May 2009.
3 The studies in this report were reviewed using WWC Evidence Standards, Version 2.0 (see the WWC Procedures and Standards Handbook, Chapter III) as described in protocol Version 2.0.
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 student-level improvement indices for all findings across the studies.