Project Activities
Research question
- To what extent did intensive, targeted interventions improve reading proficiency among struggling adolescent readers?
- To what extent were the intensive, targeted interventions implemented with fidelity?
- To what extent did school-wide literacy-throughout-the-curriculum interventions improve reading proficiency among secondary students?
- To what extent were the school-wide literacy-throughout-the-curriculum interventions implemented with fidelity?
- What did the evaluations funded by the Striving Readers program tell us about effective interventions for improving the achievement of struggling adolescent readers?
Structured Abstract
Design
This study primarily involved providing technical assistance to local independent evaluators. This was conducted through monthly phone calls and annual conferences of evaluators. Information was also gathered from the local evaluators and synthesized in cross-site tables and project profiles that were updated annually. The study also included a systematic review of 17 evaluations of the 10 different interventions funded by the Striving Readers grant program. To determine the extent to which these evaluations contribute to the evidence base, all 17 evaluations were reviewed against What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards.
Key findings
- Fifteen of the 17 independent evaluations of the interventions funded by the Striving Readers grant program met What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards with or without reservations. In other words, we can have a high degree of confidence in the findings that these studies produced. The individual evaluations can be found in the WWC database of reviewed studies at https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reviewedstudies.aspx.
- Based on findings from the 15 studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations, four of the ten interventions funded by the Striving Readers grant program had positive, potentially positive, or mixed effects on reading achievement.
- The Striving Readers studies not only expanded the evidence base on effective reading interventions for adolescents, but also increased the number of high-quality effectiveness studies reviewed by the WWC on this topic. Three of the four interventions that had positive, potentially positive, or mixed effects on reading achievement had not previously been reviewed by the WWC.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
A report, titled Summary of Research Generated by Striving Readers on the Effectiveness of Interventions for Struggling Adolescent Readers, was released in October 2015.
Additional information on the studies of individual Striving Readers projects from the Fiscal Year 2006 and Fiscal Year 2009 cohorts can be found at https://www2.ed.gov/programs/strivingreaders/performance.html.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
