The Impact of the Reading Apprenticeship Improving Secondary Education (RAISE) Project on Academic Literacy in High School: A Report of a Randomized Experiment in Pennsylvania and California Schools. Research Report
Fancsali, Cheri; Abe, Yasuyo; Pyatigorsky, Mikhail; Ortiz, Lorena; Chan, Vincent; Saltares, Eliana; Toby, Megan; Schellinger, Adam; Jaciw, Andrew (2015). Empirical Education Inc. Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED571000
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examining10,173Students, grades9-12
Department-funded evaluation
Review Details
Reviewed: January 2017
- Department-funded evaluation (findings for Reading Apprenticeship®)
- Randomized Controlled Trial
- Meets WWC standards with reservations because it is a randomized controlled trial with low attrition, but the randomization was compromised.
This review may not reflect the full body of research evidence for this intervention.
Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.
Findings
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Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
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Literacy Achievement Assessment |
Reading Apprenticeship® vs. Business as usual |
2 Years |
Full sample;
|
N/A |
N/A |
No |
-- |
Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.
Sample Characteristics
Characteristics of study sample as reported by study author.
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14% English language learners -
61% Minority -
39% Non-minority -
Female: 49%
Male: 51% -
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California, Pennsylvania
Study Details
Setting
The study took place in 42 high schools in the states of California and Pennsylvania. 152 teachers of students in 9th-12 grade English Language Arts, Science, and History participated.
Study sample
Among the 252 teachers, 57.8% were female and 33.9% taught English Literature, 33.5% taught US History, and 32.6% taught Science. On average, the teachers had been teaching for 9.94 years and a majority had Master's degrees (55.8%). Among the 14,747 students, 48.7% identified as female and 11.3% were placed into special education courses and 13.8% were English Language Learners. 60.8% identified as nonwhite.
Intervention Group
The Reading Apprenticeship instructional framework was developed to help teachers provide literacy support to students. The program focuses on four interacting dimensions of classroom learning culture: Social, Personal, Cognitive, and Knowledge-Building. These found dimensions are woven into subject-area teaching through metacognitive conversations. The Reading Apprenticeship program is designed to help teachers create classroom cultures in which students feel safe to share reading processes, problems, problems, and solutions. Students in the program are compared to students who did not receive the program.
Comparison Group
Comparison teachers and students continued to receive business-as-usual.
Support for implementation
The authors provided extensive support for implementation to the teachers. The authors first provided teachers with the professional development course and reported that 85% of the courses included intended measures of instruction. The authors also measured teachers attendance in the professional development courses and attendance at monthly meetings. To assess how the programs were being implemented, the authors asked teachers to complete program fidelity checklists. The authors reported that fidelity was consistently reported for a majority of the teachers and schools.
An indicator of the effect of the intervention, the improvement index can be interpreted as the expected change in percentile rank for an average comparison group student if that student had received the intervention.
For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for improvement index.
An outcome is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are attained as a result of an activity. An outcome measures is an instrument, device, or method that provides data on the outcome.
A finding that is included in the effectiveness rating. Excluded findings may include subgroups and subscales.
The sample on which the analysis was conducted.
The group to which the intervention group is compared, which may include a different intervention, business as usual, or no services.
The timing of the post-intervention outcome measure.
The number of students included in the analysis.
The mean score of students in the intervention group.
The mean score of students in the comparison group.
The WWC considers a finding to be statistically significant if the likelihood that the finding is due to chance alone, rather than a real difference, is less than five percent.
The WWC reviews studies for WWC products, Department of Education grant competitions, and IES performance measures.
The name and version of the document used to guide the review of the study.
The version of the WWC design standards used to guide the review of the study.
The result of the WWC assessment of the study. The rating is based on the strength of evidence of the effectiveness of the intervention. Studies are given a rating of Meets WWC Design Standards without Reservations, Meets WWC Design Standards with Reservations, or >Does Not Meet WWC Design Standards.
A related publication that was reviewed alongside the main study of interest.
Study findings for this report.
Based on the direction, magnitude, and statistical significance of the findings within a domain, the WWC characterizes the findings from a study as one of the following: statistically significant positive effects, substantively important positive effects, indeterminate effects, substantively important negative effects, and statistically significant negative effects. For more, please see the WWC Handbook.
The WWC may review studies for multiple purposes, including different reports and re-reviews using updated standards. Each WWC review of this study is listed in the dropdown. Details on any review may be accessed by making a selection from the drop down list.
Tier 1 Strong indicates strong evidence of effectiveness,
Tier 2 Moderate indicates moderate evidence of effectiveness, and
Tier 3 Promising indicates promising evidence of effectiveness,
as defined in the
non-regulatory guidance for ESSA
and the regulations for ED discretionary grants (EDGAR Part 77).