Key Findings

These key findings are drawn from Volume II: Closing the Reading Gap, Findings from a Randomized Trial of Four Reading Interventions for Striving Readers.⁶ All findings reported were statistically significant at the 0.05 level.

Characteristics of Students in the Evaluation

The characteristics of the students in the evaluation sample are shown in Exhibit 12.

• About 45 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced-price lunches. In addition, about 28 percent were African American, and 72 percent were white. Fewer than two percent were Hispanic. Roughly 32 percent of the students had a learning disability or other disability.
• On average, students in the evaluation sample scored about one-half to one standard deviation below national norms (mean 100 and standard deviation 15) on measures used to assess their ability to decode words.
• This sample, as a whole, was substantially less impaired in basic reading skills than most other samples assessed in previous research with older reading disabled students (Torgesen 2005).

⁶ Torgesen, Joseph, Florida Center for Reading Research; Allen Schirm, Laura Castner, Sonya Vartivarian, Wendy Mansfield, Mathematic Policy Research; David Myers and Fran Stancavage, American Institutes for Research; Donna Durno and Rosanne Javorsky, Allegheny Intermediate Unit; and Cinthia Haan, Haan Foundation. Report on the National Assessment of Title I, Volume II, Closing the Reading Gap: Findings from a Randomized Trial of Four Reading Interventions for Striving Readers, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2007.