For report NCEE 2011-4001 The Impact of Collaborative Strategic Reading on the Reading Comprehension of Grade 5 Students in Linguistically Diverse Schools http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?ProjectID=78

This file contains data from a rigorous experimental study of the impact of the Collaborative Strategic Reading set of instructional strategies designed to improve the reading comprehension of students with diverse abilities. Teachers implement CSR at the classroom level using scaffolded instruction to guide students in the independent use of four comprehension strategies; students apply the strategies to informational text while working in small cooperative learning groups. The goals are to improve reading comprehension and conceptual learning so that academic performance also improves. Because CSR involves changes to teachers' instructional practices, regardless of subject matter, it can be used with a variety of curricula and in a variety of settings.

The current study is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) examining the effect of CSR on student reading comprehension. Within each participating linguistically diverse school, grade 5 social studies classrooms were randomly assigned to either the CSR condition (using CSR when delivering social studies curricula) or to the control condition (a business-as-usual condition). Recruitment for the study focused on large urban and suburban districts that serve large numbers of ELL students (25 percent or more) in the Southwest Region. Districts serving large numbers of ELL students were targeted to obtain linguistically diverse schools to address the confirmatory research question and a large enough sample of ELL students to address the exploratory research questions. The final analytic sample included 74 classrooms (37 CSR, 37 control) across 26 schools and 5 districts in Oklahoma and Texas. Parent permission was required for students to participate in data collection for this study, and the final analytic sample included 1,355 students (681 CSR, 674 control).