WWC reviews adolescent literacy interventions

What Works Clearinghouse reviewed five adolescent literacy intereventions. Summary findings and links to the reports are below:

Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID): The WWC reviewed 66 studies that investigated the effects of AVID on adolescent learners. "One study of AVID that falls within the scope of the Adolescent Literacy review protocol meets What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards with reservations...AVID was found to have no discernible effects on comprehension for adolescent learners." http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/adolescent_literacy/avid/

Corrective Reading: A total of 129 studies reviewed by the WWC examined the effects of Corrective Reading on adolescent learners' alphabetics, reading fluency, and comprehension. "One study of Corrective Reading that falls within the scope of the Adolescent Literacy review protocol meets What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards...Corrective Reading was found to have no discernible effects on the alphabetics, reading fluency, and comprehension domains for adolescent learners." http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/adolescent_literacy/corrective_reading/

Reading Plus®: The WWC reviewed 18 studies..."One study of Reading Plus^® that falls within the scope of the Adolescent Literacy review protocol meets What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards with reservations...Reading Plus^® was found to have potentially positive effects on comprehension for adolescent learners." http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/adolescent_literacy/reading_plus/

Reciprocal teaching: The WWC reviewed 164 studies that investigated the effects of reciprocal teaching on adolescent learners.  "Five studies of reciprocal teaching that fall within the scope of the Adolescent Literacy review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards, and one study meets WWC evidence standards with reservations...Reciprocal teaching was found to have mixed effects on comprehension for adolescent learners." http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/adolescent_literacy/rec_teach/

Book clubs:  The WWC identified 284 studies of book clubs for adolescent learners (1989-2009). All studies either fell outside the Adolescent Literacy review protocol or did not meet WWC evidence standards. http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/adolescent_literacy/book_clubs/

Mixed results for "Literacy Express"

Literacy Express is a preschool curriculum designed for three- to five-year-old children. It is structured around units on oral language, emergent literacy, basic math, science, general knowledge, and socioemotional development.
Three studies of Literacy Express that fall within the scope of the Early Childhood Education review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The three studies include 1,004 preschool children from three to five years of age from 70 preschools...
Literacy Express was found to have positive effects on oral language, print knowledge, and phonological processing and no discernible effects on cognition and math for preschool children.

Summary and links to intervention report and technical appendices are here:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/early_ed/lit_express/

Literacy Collaborative shows significant improvements in reading

A longitudinal (4 year) study funded by IES found substantial (32%) gains in reading skills as a result of implementing the Literacy Collaborative program. Differences were notable between schools and between teachers at studied schools, and the amount of coaching teachers received seemed to play a determining role. Highlights of the research findings include:

• Students’ average rates of learning increased by 16% in the first implementation year, 28% in the second implementation year, and 32% in the third implementation year.

• Teacher expertise increased substantially, and the rate of improvement was predicted by the amount of coaching a teacher received.

• Professional communication amongst teachers in the schools increased over the three years of implementation, and the literacy coordinators became more central in the schools’ communication networks.

A summary of the report is available here; the study will be published in an upcoming issue of The Elementary School Journal.

WWC evaluation of READ 180 program

What Works Clearinghouse seldom reports out studies that meet their evidence standards, so when they find some that meet standards, even with reservations, I do pay attention. Here is a brief description of this program and a link to the page with a brief chart and links to the full report.

"READ 180 is a reading program designed for students in elementary through high school whose reading achievement is below the proficient level. The goal of READ 180 is to address gaps in students’ skills through the use of a computer program, literature, and direct instruction in reading skills. The software component of the program aims to track and adapt to each student’s progress. In addition to the computer program, the READ 180 program includes workbooks designed to address reading comprehension skills, paperback books for independent reading, and audiobooks with corresponding CDs for modeled reading.

No studies of READ 180 meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards,² but seven studies meet WWC evidence standards with reservations. The seven studies included 10,638 students, ranging from grade 4 to grade 9, who attended elementary, middle, and high schools in Arizona, California, Florida, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia.³

Based on these seven studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for READ 180 to be medium to large for comprehension and general literacy achievement. No studies that meet WWC evidence standards with or without reservations examined the effectiveness of READ 180 in the alphabetics or reading fluency domains."

Reading strategies for 4th grade: an international perspective

PIRLS assesses the reading achievement of fourth-graders and collects data on teachers' reading instruction practices and strategies. These strategies include: (a) waiting to see if performance improves with maturation, (b) spending more time working on reading individually with that student, (c) having other students work on reading with the student having difficulty, (d) having the student work in the regular classroom with a teacher-aide, (e) having the student work in the regular classroom with a reading specialist, (f) having the student work in a remedial reading classroom with a reading specialist, (g) assigning homework to help the student catch up, (h) and asking the parents to help the student with reading.

To view the full report please visit: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009013

A Big Kerfuffle over Student Choice in Reading

Nancie Atwell's advocacy of student choice in reading (see article in NY Times) elicited a huge flurry of mis-informed comment. Her video-taped response is on her publisher's page. Nancy Atwell has been one of my heroines ever since I reviewed her book, The Reading Zone, for the June '07 Education Review.

Draft legislation to emphasize adolescent literacy

Bills are moving forward in both houses that would:

• increase funding for literacy education overall
  
• increase the proportion spent on older students
• designate monies for staff development
• emphasize the connections between reading and writing

This article in Education Week provides more detail on the proposed bills and brings together opinions of interested parties.

NCES issues new report on adult literacy

"Basic Reading Skills and the Literacy of the America's Least Literate Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) Supplemental Studies."

The 2003 NAAL assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of 18,500 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in private households. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The NAAL project comprised four assessment components: the core literacy tasks, the main literacy assessment, the Fluency Addition to NAAL (FAN), and the Adult Literacy Supplemental Assessment (ALSA). Results from the main literacy assessment are reported as averages and as the percentage of adults in each of four literacy levels: Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient. This report focuses on results from the FAN and the ALSA.

The Adult Literacy Supplemental Assessment (ALSA) was administered to adults unable to successfully answer the core literacy tasks. Instead of completing the main literacy assessment, these adults completed the ALSA, which gathered information about their letter-reading, word-reading, word-identification, and basic comprehension skills.

The Fluency Addition to NAAL (FAN) measures the basic reading skills of America's adults. The FAN was administered to all adults who participated in the NAAL project following the completion of the main literacy assessment or the supplemental assessment.

Key Findings:

* Seven million adults, or about 3% of the adult population, could not complete even the most basic literacy tasks in the main assessment and were given the supplemental assessment.

* Nearly 1 in 5 adults in the nonliterate in English group had a high school diploma or GED. Among them, more than half (representing roughly 600,000 adults) had earned their high school degree in the US.

* For those for whom Spanish is a first language, a delay in learning English is associated with low basic reading skills. Those who learned English before age 11 had basic reading scores similar to average native English speakers (97 words read correctly per minute); however, for those who learned English after age 21, average scores were 35 points (or about one-third) lower. Due to the correlational nature of these data, it is impossible to make causal attributions, i.e., to say that a delay in learning English causes low basic reading skills.

* Adults who took the main literary assessment were able to read, on average, 98 words correctly per minute (wpm), in comparison to 34 wpm by those in the supplemental assessment.

To view, download and print the report as a PDF file, please visit:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009481

New adult literacy data available

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the "National Assessment of Adult Literacy: Indirect County and State Estimates of the Percentage of Adults at the Lowest Literacy Level for 1992 and 2003", which provides estimates on the percentage of adults - for all states and counties in the U.S. - who lack basic prose literacy skills. The study provides data for 2003 and 1992. This new data is currently the only available snapshot of adult literacy rates for individual states and counties.

To produce this study, NCES gathered data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), a nationally representative sample of more than 19,000 Americans age 16 and older, and the 2000 Census, which provided "predictor variables" such as education and income.

NAAL data were correlated with the predictor variables to see if there was a pattern among them. From this information, a model was established. Using the model, estimates were predicted for areas where there were not sufficient assessment data. The same approach was also applied to the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), so changes from 1992 to 2003 can be examined.

The report is accompanied by an interactive web tool, which shows the percentage of adults lacking Basic Prose Literacy Skills for all states and counties. In addition to allowing users to view adult literacy percentages for any given state, the web tool also allows for comparisons to be made between two states, two counties in the same state, two counties in different states, across years for a state, and across years for a county.

Summary of recent WWC reports

Perhaps the What Works Clearinghouse should be called the "What Works and What Doesn't Clearinghouse." Of course it does not roll quite so trippingly off the tongue, but what distinguishes WWC from other publication & information venues is that they publish results of what was not found or supported. This is of course closely tied to whether or not you agree to their criteria for what works and what doesn't :-) Here is a rundown of recent reports:

Practice Guides!
- Dropout Prevention
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/practiceguides/#dp_pg
- Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/practiceguides/#adlit_pg
- Turning Around Chronically Low-Performing Schools
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/practiceguides/#turning_pg

Intervention Reports in the Following Topic Areas!

Beginning Reading:
- Reading Mastery
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/rdgmastery/
- Open Court Reading(c)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/open_court/
- Houghton Mifflin Reading(c)
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/houghton/

Early Childhood Education:
- Breakthrough to Literacy
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/early_ed/btl/

Dropout Prevention:
- Accelerated Middle Schools
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/dropout/ams/
- New Century High Schools Initiative
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/dropout/new_century/

Middle School Math:
- Mathematics in Context - http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/middle_math/math_context/

Quick Reviews!
- Abstract Examples in Learning Math Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/abmath/
- Arkansas Teacher Performance-Pay Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/littlerock/
- Board Games and Numeracy Skills Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/boardgames/
- Los Angeles Charter School Performance Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/charterschool/
- Sixth Grade in Middle School Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/sixthgrademiddle/
- Student Incentives in Charter Schools Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/payforas/
- Teach For America Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/tfa/
- Texas Advanced Placement Incentive Program Study
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/quickreviews/texasapip/

Practice guide on improving adolescent literacy

"The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC)has released the latest practice guide from the Institute of Education Sciences, "Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices."

....This guide presents practical strategies that classroom teachers and specialists can use to help students in grades 4-12 refine and build upon their reading skills. The recommendations can be integrated into classroom instruction to help students gain more from their reading tasks, improve their motivation for and engagement in the learning process, and assist struggling readers who may need intensive and individualized attention." (announcement from IES)

Book Whisperer Blog

Some of you may already read blogs. I try and am always behind but that doesn't stop me from adding more to read :-) I've sent out previous posts about this 6th grade teacher in Texas who converts the most reluctant (she says "dormant") readers into avid book junkies. She has her own blog now, if you're interested. Book Whisperer Blog. I love reading for myself and believe in the power of reading to help in so many ways--academically and personally. There was a really interesting article by Caleb Crain in the New Yorker recently about the rise and fall?? of reading. Reading has changed the brain over the centuries and more changes are on the way if we move away from reading.