Effectiveness

Findings

The WWC review of interventions for Early Childhood Education addresses student outcomes in six domains: oral language, print knowledge, phonological processing, early reading/writing, cognition, and math. The studies included in this report address five domains: oral language, print knowledge, phonological processing, early reading/writing, and math. The findings below present the authors’ estimates and WWC-calculated estimates of the size and the statistical significance of the effects of Ready, Set, Leap!^® on students.¹⁰

Oral language. RMC Research Corporation (2003) reported no significant effect of Ready, Set, Leap!^® on oral language as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (PPVT-III). PCER Consortium (2008) also reported no significant effect on oral language when measured using the PPVT-III and Test of Language Development Primary, Third Edition (TOLD-P:3) Grammatic Understanding subtest. The average effect sizes within and across studies were not large enough to be considered substantively important according to the WWC standards (that is, at least 0.25).

Print knowledge. RMC Research Corporation (2003) reported no significant effect of Ready, Set, Leap!^® on print knowledge when measured using the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III) Letter-Word Identification subtest and the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) Letter Naming Fluency subtest. PCER Consortium (2008) reported no significant effect of Ready, Set, Leap!^® on print knowledge as measured by the Test of Early Reading Ability, Third Edition (TERA-3); WJ III Letter-Word Identification subtest; and the WJ III Spelling subtest. The average effect sizes within and across studies were not large enough to be considered substantively important according to the WWC standards.

Phonological processing. RMC Research Corporation (2003) reported no significant effect of Ready, Set, Leap!^® on phonological processing when measured using the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP) Blending Words
subtest; DIBELS Initial Sound Fluency subtest; and WJ III Sound Awareness-Rhyming subtest. PCER Consortium (2008) reported no significant effect of Ready, Set, Leap!^® as measured by the Preschool Comprehensive Test of Phonological and Print Processing (Pre-CTOPPP) Elision subtest. The average effect sizes within and across studies were not large enough to be considered substantively important according to the WWC standards.

Early reading/writing. RMC Research Corporation (2003) reported no significant effect of Ready, Set, Leap!^® on early reading/writing when measured using the
WJ III Passage Comprehension subtest, with an effect size not large enough to be considered substantively important according to the WWC standards.

Math. PCER Consortium (2008) showed that Ready, Set, Leap!^® had a negative and statistically significant effect on math when measured using Building Blocks, Shape Composition task. In WWC calculations, this negative effect was not statistically significant nor substantively important according to WWC criteria. PCER Consortium (2008) also used two other measures in the math domain—WJ III Applied Problems subtest and the Child Math Assessment Abbreviated (CMA-A) Composite—and showed no significant effects for either measure.

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, 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).