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Intervention: Waterford Early Reading Level One™

Overview1

Waterford Early Reading Level One™ is an emergent literacy curriculum that uses computer-based technology to prepare children for reading. It begins with a tutorial to familiarize the child with the computer and mouse and a reading placement evaluation to assess and determine whether a child should work on Level One objectives: capital letters, lowercase letters, or beginning decoding skills. The computerized instruction is supplemented by activities for phonological and phonemic awareness, letter recognition, knowledge of story and print concepts, and general readiness skills.

Research

One study of Waterford Early Reading Level One™ met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. 2 The study included 27 classrooms in six Head Start centers in southeastern New York. This report focuses on immediate posttest findings to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. 3 The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Waterford Early Reading Level One™ to be small for oral language and for print knowledge. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed phonological processing, early reading/writing, cognition, or math.

Effectiveness

Waterford Early Reading Level One™ was found to have no discernible effects on oral language or on print knowledge.

  Oral language Print knowledge Phonological processing Early reading/ writing Cognition Math
Rating of effectiveness No discernible effects No discernible effects na na na na
Improvement index4 Average: –0 percentile points
Range: –3 to +3 percentile points		 Average: +7 percentile points
Range: –4 to +13 percentile points		 na na na na
na = not applicable
1 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from publicly available sources: the program’s website (http://www.waterford.org, downloaded April 18, 2007) and the research literature (Fischel, Bracken, Fuchs-Eisenberg, Spira, Katz, & Shaller, in press). 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 To be eligible for the WWC’s review, the Early Childhood Education (ECE) intervention had to be implemented in English in center-based settings with children aged three to five or in preschool.
3 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
4 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the study.