These days everyone seems to be focused on reading "programs," but the evidence that they produce better results than well-informed teachers designing instruction based on the needs of the kids in their own classes is scant. From Education Week, via Reading Rockets:
Reading Programs Found Ineffective
In other words, the conclusion is that none of the four programs studied—Project CRISS, ReadAbout, Read for Real, and Reading for Knowledge—is effective.
The large-scale randomized control study
involved 6,350 students, who were all in the 5th grade, and 268
teachers in 10 urban districts with large numbers of disadvantaged
students. The 89 schools in the study were randomly assigned to either
a group of schools using one of the reading curricula being studied or
to a control group.
The researchers for the study—conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., of Princeton, N.J., for the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences—used a general reading test called the Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation, or GRADE, and reading-comprehension tests of science and social studies to measure student achievement. In addition, they factored in students’ composite scores for all tests.
They concluded that Project CRISS, developed by Creating Independence Through Student-Owned Strategies; Read About, produced by Scholastic Inc.; and Read for Real, created by Chapman University and Zaner-Bloser, had no effect on reading comprehension. In addition, they found that Reading for Knowledge, created by the Success for All Foundation, had a negative impact on the composite test scores and the science-comprehension test scores for students using that curriculum.
More here.
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