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Intervention: Waterford Early Reading Level One™

Research

Three studies reviewed by the WWC investigated the effects of Waterford Early Reading Level One™ in center-based settings. One study (Fischel, Bracken, Fuchs-Eisenberg, Spira, Katz, & Shaller, in press) was a randomized controlled trial that met WWC evidence standards. The remaining two studies did not meet WWC evidence screens.

Fischel et al. (in press) included 27 full-day Head Start classrooms over a three-year period in southeastern New York and compared oral language and print knowledge outcomes for children participating in a Waterford Early Reading Level One™ intervention group, a Let’s Begin with the Letter People® intervention group, or a business-as-usual comparison group. 5 Children in all three conditions received the High/Scope curriculum as their base condition. The Waterford Early Reading Level One™ intervention group used the studied intervention in conjunction with the High/Scope curriculum, which was the standard curriculum used by the classrooms prior to the study. The WWC includes the data from children participating in classrooms that had not participated in previous waves (that is, children from unique classrooms) because including all instances of classrooms involved a confound of past study involvement with assignment and the possible effects of this confound could not be tested because no business-as-usual comparison classrooms were studied for a second year.

Extent of evidence

The WWC categorizes the extent of evidence in each domain as small or medium to large (see the What Works Clearinghouse Extent of Evidence Categorization Scheme). The extent of evidence takes into account the number of studies and the total sample size across the studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations. 6

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.

5 For the rating of effectiveness in this WWC intervention report, the WWC includes only the results comparing the Waterford Early Reading Level One™ intervention group to the business-as-usual comparison group; however, results for the comparison between the curricula are included in a separate section of this report and Appendices A4.1–A4.2. The WWC includes the Let’s Begin with the Letter People® versus business-as-usual comparison in a separate WWC Let’s Begin with the Letter People ® intervention report.
6 The Extent of Evidence Categorization was developed to tell readers how much evidence was used to determine the intervention rating, focusing on the number and size of studies. Additional factors associated with a related concept, external validity, such as the students’ demographics and the types of settings in which studies took place, are not taken into account for the categorization.