Message From NorthBay: All Students Can Learn to Read

Last July, I wrote a blog about a Year 6 (fifth grade) student in England, “Richard,” who just happened to transfer to one of our Success for All schools in spring, 2020. The school staff tested him. He had no reading skills at all. None.

Because they only had a few months to prepare him to go to secondary school, the staff decided to use our Tutoring With the Lightning Squad program with Richard for 90 minutes a day for three weeks (it’s usually used 30 minutes a day for at least 60 days). He gained 2.2 grade levels. To his delight, he could read The Hodgeheg, and was looking forward to reading Harry Potter books!

Recently, I discovered that the gains Richard made were not unique to him.

Last summer, we were approached by John Erickson, the founder of NorthBay Education, which had a campus called NorthBay at the top of the Chesapeake. For many years, NorthBay has provided week-long outdoor education and social and emotional learning experiences for sixth graders across Maryland. However, due to Covid, this was impossible, so Erickson and NorthBay Director of Education, Rick Garber, wanted to use their staff and campus to provide an extended educational experience for students who were particularly vulnerable due to their life circumstances. Erickson and Garber wanted us (at Johns Hopkins University and the Success for All Foundation) to provide daily tutoring in reading to these students. We were delighted to agree, so in October, the program got under way. The students had to participate in remote instruction, like other Baltimore students, for six hours a day, and then had a half-hour tutoring session taught by NorthBay staff, trained by SFA coaches. The students stayed all week at the camp, and then went home over each weekend.

I can’t say that all went smoothly, but after a while NorthBay was operating well.

There were two sessions, October to January and February to June. Some students stayed for only the first session and were replaced by others. Others dropped out for a variety of reasons along the way.

I just received the test scores for the 31 students who were pretested in October and posttested on March 2, on the Gray Silent Reading Test (GSRT). Because of all the coming and going, we cannot say anything scientific about the data. We do not know if the gains were representative of all students who attended, and there was no control group. However, something extraordinary happened, and I wanted to share it.

At pretest, eight of the sixth grade students tested at the beginning first grade level (1.0), and one at 1.2. The average for these nine former non-readers at posttest was 4.1. That’s a gain of 3 grade levels in four months. Every non-reader but one reached a grade equivalent of at least 3.0. The exception got to 2.8. One got to 5.8, and one to 9.2!

I had been impressed that Richard, in England, went from zero to Hodgeheg in three weeks, but he was getting the equivalent of three tutoring sessions a day. In four months, with one session a day, every one of the nine non-reading NorthBay students went from zero to Hodgeheg, and some from zero to Harry Potter.

Other students also made astonishing gains. One went from 1.8 to 5.8. One, from 2.0 to 5.0. One from 3.0 to 7.5. One from 3.5 to 9.8.

There were many things going on in this experience, of course. The students were living at a beautiful, peaceful place for four months, with caring staff, good food, and great outdoor activities. They were experiencing the Baltimore City online curriculum, with good computer linkages and plenty of on-site assistance. Tutoring is not all they were getting.

The most important conclusion from the NorthBay experience is that these kids, mostly from very difficult backgrounds, could learn to read. The NorthBay experience suggests that they always could have learned to read under the right circumstances. Had they had the opportunity to make these gains earlier in elementary school, and reached the third grade level or better by, say, third grade, perhaps they would now be at grade level in sixth grade.

The message of NorthBay is that the problems kids face in learning to read are not usually due to anything wrong with the kids. It is not due to anything wrong with the capable and heroic teachers who have done their very best. It is the system, far beyond Baltimore, that does not allocate the funding needed to provide every struggling reader whatever is necessary to learn to read.

Today, Baltimore City Public Schools is about to receive significant funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and other sources. They cannot send everyone to NorthBay, though that would be wonderful. But they can use the new funds to create the teaching and tutoring resources that made such a difference. And so can any school or district in America.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Large-Scale Tutoring as a Solution for School Closure Losses: Is the Idea Taking Hold?

What will America’s schools be like when they reopen in fall, 2020? There are many things we don’t know, and conditions will vary considerably from state to state and school to school. To begin with, we need to strengthen our schools, to be sure they have the teachers and administrators and supplies they need to do their essential work. However, schools will need more than just a return to the status quo. One thing we can absolutely predict is that millions of children will have fallen far behind in their educational progression. In particular, many elementary students in the early stages of learning reading and mathematics will need effective and rapid assistance tailored to their needs to get back on track. Dedicated teachers and other educators will do everything in their power to bring students back up to speed, but without additional assistance, it will be very difficult to overcome the losses so many children have experienced. States and school districts will be struggling economically, so no matter how clearly they understand what needs to be done, they will need help. Yet at the same time, there will be large numbers of capable people eager to help struggling children who will be on the sidelines, without jobs that enable them to make the difference they want to make.

If you have been following my blogs for the past month or so (here, here, here, and here), you will be aware that I have been writing quite a bit about the idea of recruiting, training, and deploying large numbers of tutors to work in schools that have been closed for many months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our research and reviews of research have found that several one-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring approaches that use teaching assistants (usually people with college degrees but not teaching certificates) have demonstrated effect sizes of +0.40 or more, roughly equivalent to five additional months of learning over a school year. No other type of educational service comes close to these impacts. My argument has been that in the recession we will be facing when school opens in the fall, it would be good for the economy as well as essential for students to have government fund thousands of tutors to work with students who have fallen far behind grade level in reading or mathematics.

This idea may be taking hold. For example, the State of Tennessee recently announced a plan to work with Big Brothers, Big Sisters to recruit and train people to serve as tutors, as a response to the school closures (here and here). On May 15, the House of Representatives passed the Heroes Act, which includes substantial additional funding for K-12 education. This includes “initiatives to reduce education gaps.” This could certainly include tutoring. I heard that there was talk in the Senate about funding that could also support tutoring. None of these federal initiatives are certain, but at this point, what is important is that solutions of this kind are in discussion.

In addition, other observers are also proposing large-scale tutoring as a solution for the educational damage done by school closures (and as a means of providing essential employment to thousands of recent college graduates otherwise unable to enter the job market). Jill Barshay wrote about this in a recent article in the Hechinger Report. Matthew Kraft and Michael Goldstein wrote on the topic in a recent Brookings blog. Susan Dynarski wrote an op-ed on the proposal in the New York Times.

One concern I have heard expressed about the tutoring plan is that with all the uncertainties about the progression of Covid-19 and plans to re-open schools, it is not clear whether schools will re-open on time or not, and whenever they do open, they may use double sessions or other means to reduce the number of children being taught at a given time, to allow for social distancing within schools. If neither cures nor vaccines are available by the fall, late or partial school openings are indeed possible. We and other tutoring providers are developing and piloting distance tutoring models, and are willing to share them with other tutoring providers, should this be necessary. And if schools do not open in September at all, then the need for intensive solutions such as tutoring are that much greater, whenever schools open.

If large-scale tutoring is to be used as part of recovery plans for schools, then preparations need to be begun as soon as possible, to coordinate the efforts of various providers, and then begin to recruit and train tutors, trainers, and others whose efforts will be needed to make this all work. It would be wonderful if some number of tutors could be ready to go, starting with the elementary grades, soon after students arrive in school, and then expand services to add capacity to serve additional children in need over the 2020-2021 school year.

In the late 1930s, the extraordinary potential of penicillin to treat wounds and diseases was known by scientists and government officials in Britain, and they knew that war was coming and that penicillin could save millions of lives. However, no one knew how to mass produce enough penicillin to matter. The British contracted with an American company to work rapidly on the problem, and by the start of World War II, there was enough penicillin for a start, and massive manufacturing capacity to make more. In a way, we are in a similar situation with tutoring. We know what has to be done to provide millions of American children with the most effective service known to put them back on track, and it is clearly going to be necessary to do so. Yet we have a lot of work to do to make this happen in time.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused great devastation in our economy, our society, and our schools. There are many things we must do to repair these losses. In each arena, we have to use the best methods we have to cost-effectively solve problems caused by the crisis. In our field of education, there are many things that must be done, but tutoring, to ensure that students can catch up to grade level, should be part of this great effort.

Photo courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

Science of Reading: Can We Get Beyond Our 30-Year Pillar Fight?

How is it possible that the “reading wars” are back on? The reading wars primarily revolve around what are often called the five pillars of early reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. Actually, there is little debate about the importance of comprehension, vocabulary, or fluency, so the reading wars are mainly about phonemic awareness and phonics. Diehard anti-phonics advocates exist, but in all of educational research, there are few issues that have been more convincingly settled by high-quality evidence. The National Reading Panel (2000), the source of the five pillars, has been widely cited as conclusive evidence that success in the early stages of reading depends on ensuring that students are all successful in phonemic awareness, phonics, and the other pillars. I was invited to serve on that panel, but declined, because I thought it was redundant. Just a short time earlier, the National Research Council’s Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) had covered essentially the same ground and came to essentially the same conclusion, as had Marilyn Adams’ (1990) Beginning to Read, and many individual studies. To my knowledge, there is little credible evidence to the contrary. Certainly, then and now there have been many students who learn to read successfully with or without a focus on phonemic awareness and phonics. However, I do not think there are many students who could succeed with non-phonetic approaches but cannot learn to read with phonics-emphasis methods. In other words, there is little if any evidence that phonemic awareness or phonics cause harm, but a great deal of evidence that for perhaps more than half of students, effective instruction emphasizing phonemic awareness and phonics are essential. Since it is impossible to know in advance which students will need phonics and which will not, it just makes sense to teach using methods likely to maximize the chances that all children (those who need phonics and those who would succeed with or without them) will succeed in reading.

However…

The importance of the five pillars of the National Reading Panel (NRP) catechism are not in doubt among people who believe in rigorous evidence, as far as I know. The reading wars ended in the 2000s and the five pillars won. However, this does not mean that knowing all about these pillars and the evidence behind them is sufficient to solve America’s reading problems. The NRP pillars describe essential elements of curriculum, but not of instruction.

Improving reading outcomes for all children requires the five pillars, but they are not enough. The five pillars could be extensively and accurately taught in every school of education, and this would surely help, but it would not solve the problem. State and district standards could emphasize the five pillars and this would help, but would not solve the problem. Reading textbooks, software, and professional development could emphasize the five pillars and this would help, but it would not solve the problem.

The reason that such necessary policies would still not be sufficient is that teaching effectiveness does not just depend on getting curriculum right. It also depends on the nature of instruction, classroom management, grouping, and other factors. Teaching reading without teaching phonics is surely harmful to large numbers of students, but teaching phonics does not guarantee success.

As one example, consider grouping. For a very long time, most reading teachers have used homogeneous reading groups. For example, the “Stars” might contain the highest-performing readers, the “Rockets” the middle readers, and the “Planets” the lowest readers. The teacher calls up groups one at a time. No problem there, but what are the students doing back at their desks? Mostly worksheets, on paper or computers. The problem is that if there are three groups, each student spends two thirds of reading class time doing, well, not much of value. Worse, the students are sitting for long periods of time, with not much to do, and the teacher is fully occupied elsewhere. Does anyone see the potential for idle hands to become the devil’s playground? The kids do.

There are alternatives to reading groups, such as the Joplin Plan (cross-grade grouping by reading level), forms of whole-class instruction, or forms of cooperative learning. These provide active teaching to all students all period. There is good evidence for these alternatives (Slavin, 1994, 2017). My main point is that a reading strategy that follows NRP guidelines 100% may still succeed or fail based on its grouping strategy. The same could be true of the use of proven classroom management strategies or motivational strategies during reading periods.

To make the point most strongly, imagine that a district’s teachers have all thoroughly mastered all five pillars of science of reading, which (we’ll assume) are strongly supported by their district and state. In an experiment, 40 teachers of grades 1 to 3 are selected, and 20 of these are chosen at random to receive sufficient tutors to work with their lowest-achieving 33% of students in groups of four, using a proven model based on science of reading principles. The other 20 schools just use their usual materials and methods, also emphasizing science of reading curricula and methods.

The evidence from many studies of tutoring (Inns et al., 2020), as well as common sense, tell us what would happen. The teachers supported by tutors would produce far greater achievement among their lowest readers than would the other equally science-of-reading-oriented teachers in the control group.

None of these examples diminish the importance of science of reading. But they illustrate that knowing science of reading is not enough.

At www.evidenceforessa.org, you can find 65 elementary reading programs of all kinds that meet high standards of effectiveness. Almost all of these use approaches that emphasize the five pillars. Yet Evidence for ESSA also lists many programs that equally emphasize the five pillars and yet have not found positive impacts. Rather than re-starting our thirty-year-old pillar fight, don’t you think we might move on to advocating programs that not only use the right curricula, but are also proven to get excellent results for kids?

References

Adams, M.J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Inns, A., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (2020). A synthesis of quantitative research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. Available at www.bestevidence.org. Manuscript submitted for publication.

National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Slavin, R. E. (1994). School and classroom organization in beginning reading: Class size, aides, and instructional grouping. In R. E. Slavin, N. L. Karweit, and B. A. Wasik (Eds.), Preventing early school failure. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Slavin, R. E. (2017). Instruction based on cooperative learning. In R. Mayer & P. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of research on learning and instruction. New York: Routledge.

Snow, C.E., Burns, S.M., & Griffin, P. (Eds.) (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org.

How Evidence-Based Reform Saved Patrick

Several years ago, I heard a touching story. There was a fourth grader in a school in Southern Maryland who had not learned to read. I’ll call him Patrick. A proven reading program came to the school and replaced the school’s haphazard reading approach with a systematic, phonetic model, with extensive teacher training and coaching. By the end of the school year, Patrick was reading near grade level.

Toward the end of the year, Patrick’s mother came to the school to thank his teacher for what she’d done for him. She showed Patrick’s teacher a box in which Patrick had saved every one of his phonetic readers. “Patrick calls this his treasure box,” she said. “He says he is going to keep these books forever, so that if he ever has a child of his own, he can teach him how to read.”

If you follow my blogs, or other writings on evidence-based practice, they often sound a little dry, full of effect sizes and wonkiness. Yet all of those effect sizes and policy proposals mean nothing unless they are changing the lives of children.

Traditional educational practices are perhaps fine for most kids, but there are millions of kids like Patrick who are not succeeding in school but could be, if they experienced proven programs and practices. In particular, there is no problem in education we know more about than early reading failure. A recent review we just released on programs for struggling readers identified 61 very high-quality studies of 48 programs. 22 of these programs meet the “strong” or “moderate” effectiveness standards for ESSA. Eleven programs had effect sizes from +0.30 to +0.86. There are proven one-to-one and small-group tutoring programs, classroom interventions, and whole-school approaches. They differ in costs, impacts, and practicability in various settings, but it is clear that reading failure can be prevented or remediated before third grade for nearly all children. Yet most struggling young readers do not receive any of these programs.

Patrick, at age 10, had the foresight to prepare to someday help his own child avoid the pain and humiliation he had experienced. Why is it so hard for caring grownups in positions of authority to come to the same understanding?

Patrick must be about 30 by now. Perhaps he has a child of his own. Wherever he is, I’m certain he remembers how close he came to a life of illiteracy and failure. I wonder if he still has his treasure box with the books inside it.

Patrick probably does not know where those books came from, the research supporting their use, or the effect sizes from the many evaluations. He doesn’t need to be a researcher to understand what happened to him. What he does know is that someone cared enough to give him an opportunity to learn to read.

Why does what happened to Patrick have to be such a rare occurrence? If you understand what the evidence means and you see educators and policy makers continuing to ignore it, shouldn’t you be furious?

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Could Proven Programs Eliminate Gaps in Elementary Reading Achievement?

What if every child in America could read at grade level or better? What if the number of students in special education for learning disabilities, or retained in grade, could be cut in half?

What if students who become behavior problems or give up on learning because of nothing more than reading difficulties could instead succeed in reading and no longer be frustrated by failure?

Today these kinds of outcomes are only pipe dreams. Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars directed toward remedial and special education, reading levels have barely increased. Gaps between middle class and economically disadvantaged students remain wide, as do gaps between ethnic groups. We’ve done so much, you might think, and nothing has really worked at scale.

Yet today we have many solutions to the problems of struggling readers, solutions so effective that if widely and effectively implemented, they could substantially change not only the reading skills, but the life chances of students who are struggling in reading.

How do I know this is possible? The answer is that the evidence is there for all to see.

This week, my colleagues and I released a review of research on programs for struggling readers. The review, written by Amanda Inns, Cynthia Lake, Marta Pellegrini, and myself, uses academic language and rigorous review methods. But you don’t have to be a research expert to understand what we found out. In ten minutes, just reading this blog, you will know what needs to be done to have a powerful impact on struggling readers.

Everyone knows that there are substantial gaps in student reading performance according to social class and race. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, here are key gaps in terms of effect sizes at fourth grade:

	Gap in Effect Sizes
No Free/Reduced lunch/ Free/Reduced lunch	0.56
White/African American	0.52
White/Hispanic	0.46

These are big differences. In order to eliminate these gaps, we’d have to provide schools serving disadvantaged and minority students with programs or services sufficient to increase their reading scores by about a half standard deviation. Is this really possible?

Can We Really Eliminate Such Big and Longstanding Gaps?

Yes, we can. And we can do it cost-effectively.

Our review examined thousands of studies of programs intended to improve the reading performance of struggling readers. We found 59 studies of 39 different programs that met very high standards of research quality. 73% of the qualifying studies used random assignment to experimental or control groups, just as the most rigorous medical studies do. We organized the programs into response to intervention (RTI) tiers:

Tier 1 means whole-class programs, not just for struggling readers

Tier 2 means targeted services for students who are struggling to read

Tier 3 means intensive services for students who have serious difficulties.

Our categories were as follows:

Multi-Tier (Tier 1 + tutoring for students who need it)

Tier 1:

Whole-class programs

Tier 2:

Technology programs
One-to-small group tutoring

Tier 3:

One-to-one tutoring

We are not advocating for RTI itself, because the data on RTI are unclear. But it is just common sense to use proven programs with all students, then proven remedial approaches with struggling readers, then intensive services for students for whom Tier 2 is not sufficient.

Do We Have Proven Programs Able to Overcome the Gaps?

The table below shows average effect sizes for specific reading approaches. Wherever you see effect sizes that approach or exceed +0.50, you are looking at proven solutions to the gaps, or at least programs that could become a component in a schoolwide plan to ensure the success of all struggling readers.

Programs That Work for Struggling Elementary Readers

Multi-Tier Approaches	Grades Proven	No. of Studies	Mean Effect Size
Success for All	K-5	3	+0.35
Enhanced Core Reading Instruction	1	1	+0.24

Tier 1 – Classroom Approaches
Cooperative Integrated Reading & Composition (CIRC)	2-6	3	+0.11
PALS	1	1	+0.65

Tier 2 – One-to-Small Group Tutoring
Read, Write, & Type (T 1-3)	1	1	+0.42
Lindamood (T 1-3)	1	1	+0.65
SHIP (T 1-3)	K-3	1	+0.39
Passport to Literacy (TA 1-4/7)	4	4	+0.15
Quick Reads (TA 1-2)	2-3	2	+0.22

Tier 3 One-to-One Tutoring
Reading Recovery (T)	1	3	+0.47
Targeted Reading Intervention (T)	K-1	2	+0.50
Early Steps (T)	1	1	+0.86
Lindamood (T)	K-2	1	+0.69
Reading Rescue (T or TA)	1	1	+0.40
Sound Partners (TA)	K-1	2	+0.43
SMART (PV)	K-1	1	+0.40
SPARK (PV)	K-2	1	+0.51

Key: T: Certified teacher tutors

TA: Teaching assistant tutors

PV: Paid volunteers (e.g., AmeriCorps members)

1-X: For small group tutoring, the usual group size for tutoring (e.g., 1-2, 1-4)

(For more information on each program, see www.evidenceforessa.org)

The table is a road map to eliminating the achievement gaps that our schools have wrestled with for so long. It only lists programs that succeeded at a high level, relative to others at the same tier levels. See the full report or www.evidenceforessa for information on all programs.

It is important to note that there is little evidence of the effectiveness of tutoring in grades 3-5. Almost all of the evidence is from grades K-2. However, studies done in England in secondary schools have found positive effects of three reading tutoring programs in the English equivalent of U.S. grades 6-7. These findings suggest that when well-designed tutoring programs for grades 3-5 are evaluated, they will also show very positive impacts. See our review on secondary reading programs at www.bestevidence.org for information on these English middle school tutoring studies. On the same website, you can also see a review of research on elementary mathematics programs, which reports that most of the successful studies of tutoring in math took place in grades 2-5, another indicator that reading tutoring is also likely to be effective in these grades.

Some of the individual programs have shown effects large enough to overcome gaps all by themselves if they are well implemented (i.e., ES = +0.50 or more). Others have effect sizes lower than +0.50 but if combined with other programs elsewhere on the list, or if used over longer time periods, are likely to eliminate gaps. For example, one-to-one tutoring by certified teachers is very effective, but very expensive. A school might implement a Tier 1 or multi-tier approach to solve all the easy problems inexpensively, then use cost-effective one-to-small group methods for students with moderate reading problems, and only then use one-to-one tutoring with the small number of students with the greatest needs.

Schools, districts, and states should consider the availability, practicality, and cost of these solutions to arrive at a workable solution. They then need to make sure that the programs are implemented well enough and long enough to obtain the outcomes seen in the research, or to improve on them.

But the inescapable conclusion from our review is that the gaps can be closed, using proven models that already exist. That’s big news, news that demands big changes.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Elementary Lessons from Junior Village

When I was thirteen, I spent a summer as a volunteer at a giant orphanage in Washington, DC. Every child was African-American, and from an extremely disadvantaged background. Every one had surely experienced unspeakable trauma: death or desertion of parents, abuse, and neglect.

I was assigned to work with fourth and fifth grade boys. We played games, sang songs, did crafts, and generally had a good time. There was a kind volunteer coordinator who gave each of us volunteers a few materials and suggestions, but otherwise, as I recall, each one or two of us volunteers, age 13 to 16, was responsible for about 20 kids, all day.

I know this sounds like a recipe for chaos and disaster, but it was just the opposite. The kids were terrific, every one. They were so eager for attention that everywhere I went, I had three or four kids hanging on to me. But the kids were happy, engaged, loving, and active. I do not recall a single fight or discipline problem all summer. I think this summer experience had a big impact on my own choice of career.

There are two reasons I bring up Junior Village. First, it is to reinforce the experience that most elementary school teachers have, even in the most challenged and challenging schools. There are many problems in such schools, but the kids are great. Elementary-aged kids everywhere respond positively to just a little kindness and attention. I’ve visited hundreds of elementary schools over my career, and with few exceptions, these are happy and productive places with sweet and loving kids, no matter where they are.

Second, the observation that elementary-aged children are so wonderful should make it clear that this is the time to make certain that every one of them is successful in school. Middle and high school students are usually wonderful too, but if they are significantly behind in academics, many are likely to start a process that leads to disengagement, failure, acting out, and dropping out.

Evidence is mounting that it is possible to ensure that every child from any background, even the most disadvantaged, can be successful in elementary school (see www.evidenceforessa.org). Use of proven whole-school and whole-class approaches, followed up by one-to-small group and one-to-one tutoring for those who need them, can ensure success for nearly all students. A lot can be done in secondary school too, but building on a solid foundation from sixth grade forward is about a million times easier than trying to remediate serious problems (a privileged glimpse into the perfectly obvious).

Nationwide, we spend a lot more on secondary schools than on elementary schools. Yet investing in proven programs and practices in elementary school can ensure uniformly successful students leaving elementary school ready and eager to achieve success in secondary school.

I remember participating many years ago in a meeting of middle school principals in Philadelphia. The district was going to allocate some money for innovations. A district leader asked the principals if they would rather have the money themselves, or have it spent on improving outcomes in the elementary grades. Every one said, “Spend it early. Send us kids who can read.”

If you think it is not possible to ensure the success of virtually every child by the end of elementary school, I’d encourage you to look at all the effective whole-school, whole-class, one-to-small group, and one-to-one tutoring programs proven effective in the elementary grades. But in addition, go visit kids in any nearby elementary school, no matter how disadvantaged the kids are. Like my kids at Junior Village, they will revive your sense of what is possible. These kids need a fair shot at success, but they will repay it many times over.

Photo credit: By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Twenty-four Proven Programs for Struggling Readers

One of the greatest impediments to evidence-based reform in education is the belief that there are very few programs that have been rigorously evaluated and found to be effective. People often make fun of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), calling it the Nothing Works Clearinghouse, because in its early days there were, in fact, few programs that met WWC standards.

If you believe in the “nothing works” formulation, I’ve got astonishing news for you. You might want to find a safe place to sit, and remove any eyeglasses or sharp objects, before reading any further, to avoid accidental injury.

Ready?

I have been reviewing research on various programs for elementary struggling readers to find out how many meet the new ESSA evidence standards. The answer: at least 24. Of these, 14 met the “strong” ESSA criterion, which means that there was at least one randomized study with statistically significant positive effects. Eight met the “moderate” standard, which requires at least one quasi-experimental (i.e., matched) study with significant positive effects. Two met the “promising” standard, requiring at least one correlational study with positive effects. (For a list of struggling reader programs organized by ESSA categories, click here).

I should hasten to explain that the numbers of proven programs will be higher for struggling readers programs than for whole-class programs, because most of the struggling readers programs are one-to-one or one-to-small-group tutoring. But still, the number and diversity of proven programs is impressive. Among the 24 programs, eight used one-to-one tutoring by teachers, paraprofessionals, or volunteers. Nine used small-group tutoring by teachers or paraprofessionals. However, one used computer-assisted instruction, and five used whole-school or whole-class methods and reported significantly positive effects on the students who had been in the lowest-achieving third or quarter of the classes at pretest. Two of the 24 programs, Reading Recovery (1-1 tutoring by teachers) and Success for All (whole-school approach) are well known and have been around a long time, but many others are much less well known. Of course, one-to-one tutoring, especially by teachers, can be very expensive, but whole-school and whole-class approaches tend to be relatively inexpensive on a per-pupil basis.

Here’s my point. Schools seeking proven, practical approaches to improving outcomes for their struggling readers have a wide array of attractive alternatives. Six of them, Reading Recovery, Success for All, Sound Partners (1-1 tutoring by paraprofessionals), Lindamood (small group tutoring by teachers), Targeted Reading Intervention (1-1 tutoring by teachers), and Empower Reading (small group tutoring by teachers) all have large effect sizes from randomized experiments and have been proven in from two to 28 studies.

It is important to note that there are also many programs for struggling readers that have been evaluated and found to be ineffective, including tutoring programs. It matters a lot which program you choose.

Every school and district has children who are struggling to learn to read, and all too often their solution is to make up their own approach for these students, or to purchase materials, software, or services from vendors who can present no credible evidence of effectiveness. If there were no proven solutions, such strategies might make sense, but how can they be justified when there are so many proven alternatives?

A better use of time and energy might be for educational leaders to review the proven programs for struggling readers, seek information about their benefits and costs, speak with educators who have used them, and perhaps arrange a visit to schools using programs being considered. Then they’d have a good chance of picking an approach that is likely to work if well implemented.

Soon, we will have information about proven programs in every subject and grade level, for all types of learners. Wouldn’t this be a good time to get into the habit of using proven programs to improve student outcomes?

Why Leave Learning to Chance?

Every year about four million kindergartners enter America’s schools. They’re all excited, eager and confident, because that’s the nature of kindergartners, but unfortunately, we adults know better. We know that among those wonderful five year olds, 65% will reach fourth grade reading below the “proficient” level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and 31% will not even reach the “basic” level. We know which students in which neighborhoods are most likely to have these problems. Since 1980, the story has hardly changed.

Today, I’m writing this blog from an airplane flying from Baltimore to San Francisco. Flying was a risky business long ago, but today the chances are infinitesimal that my airplane will crash.

So here’s a question. Why is it ok to leave the reading success of children to chance? Why don’t we treat reading success the way we treat air safety, as something to ensure no matter what?

If you think we don’t yet know how to ensure the reading success of all children, you might be right, but I can tell you that we absolutely do know how to ensure a much higher level of success than we have now, with today’s teachers and today’s schools. I was recently reviewing research evaluating reading programs, and I found more than 60 different programs with moderate to strong evidence of effectiveness: one-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring, classroom methods, school-wide reforms, and technology. Over time, it’s certain that these approaches, and combinations of them, could become more and more effective, and we could approach 100% success.

Getting to 100% will require more than just better instruction. We are doing a study in high-poverty schools in Baltimore and found that while at least 21% of second and third graders need glasses, only 6% have them. I’m sure there are similar stories relating to hearing, dental, health, and mental health. Absenteeism is another blocker, and there are more. If we want to get to 100%, we have to deal with all of these.

Well sure, you might say, but how could we afford all of this? Fortunately, the most widespread reading problems can be solved inexpensively. The average annual per-pupil cost in the U.S. is about $11,000. The annual cost of our proven Success for All reading program is around $100 additional, or less than 1% of what we are already spending. Two pairs of eyeglasses — one to take home and one to leave at school — including the eye exam and glasses replacement, costs less than $50. Proven tutoring models provided by paraprofessionals can cost as little as $400 per student, but even at $2000 for one-to-one tutoring, that’s 18% of average per-pupil cost, and for only a minority of the class.

These modest expenditures on proven programs quickly pay back their costs in terms of reducing special education and retention, much less long-term benefits to children and society. Yet none of the 60 proven and promising programs I found is in truly widespread use.

On my airplane, of course, the situation is quite different. Pilots are carefully and extensively trained in proven methods. Technology is constantly developing to provide information and automated assistance to ensure safety and effectiveness. Back-up systems ensure that if things go wrong despite the best of preparation, disaster will not result. All of these systems are constantly evolving in response to development, evaluation, and implementation of innovations.

The reading success of a child is a very serious matter. It simply makes no sense to treat it any less seriously than we treat air safety. Just as on airplanes, we need systems to monitor children’s success, not to punish teachers but to know when and how to intervene if trouble arises.

Perhaps someday, we’ll put Boeing or Lockheed Martin in charge of our schools, and charge them with getting us as close as possible to 100% success in reading. I can see it now.

Proven approaches to:

Phonemic awareness? Check
Phonics? Check
Vocabulary? Check
Fluency? Check
Comprehension? Check
Vision? Check
Hearing? Check
Tutoring backup? Check

Ready for takeoff!

Of course we can solve this problem. All we have to do is to decide it must be solved and then do it. It is neither efficient nor ethical to keep accepting the number of reading disasters we experience in our schools.

Evidence-Based Practice: It’s About the Kids

Many years ago, I heard a heart-rending story. There was a fourth grader in a school in Southern Maryland who had not learned to read. I’ll call him Patrick. A proven reading program, our Success for All model, came to the school and replaced the school’s haphazard reading approach with a systematic, phonetic model. By the end of the school year, Patrick was reading near grade level.

Here is the importance of this story. If you follow my blogs in the Huffington Post, or other writings on evidence-based practice, they often sound a little dry, full of effect sizes and wonkiness. Yet all of those effect sizes and policy proposals mean nothing unless they are changing the lives of children.

Traditional educational practices are perhaps fine for most kids, but there are millions of kids like Patrick who are not succeeding in school but could be, if they experienced proven programs and practices. Patrick, at age 10, had the foresight to prepare to help his own child someday avoid the pain and humiliation he had experienced. Why is it so hard for caring grownups in positions of authority to come to the same understanding?

There is no problem in education we know more about than early reading failure. There are proven one-to-one and small-group tutoring programs, classroom interventions, and whole-school approaches like Success for All. They differ in costs, impacts, and practicability in various settings, but it is clear that reading failure can be prevented or remediated before third grade for nearly all children. Yet most struggling young readers do not receive any of these programs.

Patrick probably does not know where those books came from, the research supporting their use, or the effect sizes from the many evaluations. He doesn’t need to be a researcher to understand what happened to him. What he does know is that somehow, someone cared enough to give him an opportunity to learn to read, using a program proven to be effective.

Follow Robert E. Slavin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RobertSlavin

Lessons from Innovators: Children’s Learning Initiative

The process of moving an educational innovation from a good idea to widespread effective implementation is far from straightforward, and no one has a magic formula for doing it. The W. T. Grant and Spencer Foundations, with help from the Forum for Youth Investment, have created a community composed of grantees in the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) program to share ideas and best practices. Our Success for All program participates in this community. In this space, I, in partnership with the two foundations, will highlight observations from the experiences of i3 grantees other than our own, in an attempt to share the thinking and experience of colleagues out on the front lines of evidence-based reform.

Today’s post focuses on the Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI). It is based on conversations between the Forum and CLI’s Executive Director, Kelly Hunter, on what it takes to maintain fidelity to a complex model in light of constant change in urban school districts. A summary of her comments is as follows.

Plan for change and stick to your core. School systems are in constant flux and developers must be prepared for instability. The Children’s Literacy Initiative (CLI) tries to do that by using training, coaching and other supports to promote quality teaching to ensure that students in low performing, urban districts are proficient readers, writers and thinkers by the end of third grade. They are currently attempting to scale their effort to four new districts, Camden, Chicago, Newark and Philadelphia. This is easier said than done. Such districts experience frequent teacher and administrator turnover, school closures and mergers, and charter formation. Hunter suggests that if you want to implement with fidelity you first have to take a long and hard look at your model, make decisions about what is core, and then message those core ingredients in a way that respects where schools are coming from. Hunter notes, “We realized that we were struggling with messaging our change model. Even though research shows quality teaching is the number one school factor, funders and others were focused on other reforms that are sexy today. We didn’t want to focus on being negative or bad mouthing other reforms. We just knew we had to be strong in our position, share the research, and stay clear about our message and core ingredients.”

Identify the right champions. Kelly and her partners at CLI have learned that regional superintendents are a critical ingredient for sustained change. These area leaders have considerable influence over principals. “At the beginning,” Hunter notes, “we would get central office and schools to sign off, but not the regional superintendents. Then we would be off and running but all of a sudden the regionals were messaging something different than what we were doing.” When regional leaders began to understand the importance of fidelity and appreciate the core ingredients, they were then able to share their enthusiasm with principals or set standards to reinforce values and practices consistent with the model.

Partner to multiply resources and minimize obstacles. As they push towards scale, leaders at CLI have also learned the importance of cultivating new and varied partnerships. In addition to district staff, especially important partners include local funders and other program providers. Local funders are essential from a sustainability standpoint. It is also critical to partner with other entities that provide related services or technical assistance within a building or district – even when they involve a different subject matter or grade. These partnerships can allow for more comprehensive and coherent supports across disciplines and grade levels and minimize confusion among and competing demands on district staff. “It’s about enhancing what we are doing, not changing it,” comments Hunter. For example, in one i3 school in West Philadelphia, Drexel University was providing coaching services in math while CLI was providing literacy coaching. By working together, they were able to make coaching across these topics more consistent and communication more streamlined.

Scale back to scale up. Implementing innovative practices is complicated and labor intensive. Regional knowledge is necessary to help align external needs and resources with your own organizations’ demands and capacities. Networking locally is a great way to learn about a school, community or district, and to identify key stakeholders, funders, and advocates. But building this knowledge and these relationships takes staff, time, and energy. To address this challenge, CLI revisited their initial plan and decided to concentrate energy and resources on implementing the model deeply in four cities rather than spread themselves thinly across ten. According to Hunter, “we knew that in some communities, we didn’t have enough local influence, networking and outreach to raise the dollars and implement the model with fidelity. We were chasing dollars and our model was being compromised. Ultimately that compromises student achievement.” Instead, she says, “over time we hope to build our presence in and around our four hubs and eventually serve as a model for other communities as they scale to surrounding schools and districts.”

Follow Robert E. Slavin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RobertSlavin