Review
Effective programs for struggling readers: A best-evidence synthesis

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Abstract

This article reviews research on the achievement outcomes of alternative approaches for struggling readers ages 5–10 (US grades K-5): One-to-one tutoring, small-group tutorials, classroom instructional process approaches, and computer-assisted instruction. Study inclusion criteria included use of randomized or well-matched control groups, study duration of at least 12 weeks, and use of valid measures independent of treatments. A total of 97 studies met these criteria. The review concludes that one-to-one tutoring is very effective in improving reading performance. Tutoring models that focus on phonics obtain much better outcomes than others. Teachers are more effective than paraprofessionals and volunteers as tutors. Small-group, phonetic tutorials can be effective, but are not as effective as one-to-one phonetically focused tutoring. Classroom instructional process programs, especially cooperative learning, can have very positive effects for struggling readers. Computer-assisted instruction had few effects on reading. Taken together, the findings support a strong focus on improving classroom instruction and then providing one-to-one, phonetic tutoring to students who continue to experience difficulties.

Introduction

Over the past 25 years, there have been extraordinary developments in research, policy, and practice relating to programs for elementary-aged children who are struggling to learn to read. While there has long been concern about reading disabilities, dyslexia, and underachievement, research and development since the 1980s has created a sense of optimism that most children who start off their time in school struggling to learn to read can be quickly brought into the mainstream in this crucial skill. The appearance of Reading Recovery, first in New Zealand and later in the US, the UK, and throughout the English-speaking world, gave particular hope that tutors with extensive training could prevent reading failure with a substantial proportion of the children who were failing in first grade and were therefore at risk of serious difficulties throughout their time in school. In the US in the 1990s, the Clinton administration's America Reads initiative encouraged the creation of programs for volunteer tutors to work with struggling children, and this led to widespread development and evaluation of replicable programs for this purpose. Reading First, the Bush Administration's initiative for children in grades K-3, focused on high-poverty, low-achieving schools, with a particular focus on small-group interventions for struggling readers. A new focus in special education on response to intervention, particularly in the US (see Allington and Walmsey, 2007, Fuchs and Fuchs, 2006, Gersten et al., 2009), in which at-risk children receive small-group interventions and then possibly one-to-one tutoring to attempt to solve their problems before they might be referred to special education, has also encouraged development and research on small-group tutorials. In the UK, the government introduced a program called Every Child a Reader to disseminate Reading Recovery throughout England (see Burroughs-Lange, 2007, Burroughs-Lange, 2008, Policy Exchange, 2009). In addition to benefitting children, each of these initiatives has stimulated research of all kinds. In 1993, Wasik and Slavin reviewed research on tutoring programs, and found only five studies. In 2000, Elbaum, Vaughn, Hughes, and Moody reviewed one-to-one tutoring programs, but the great majority of the available research focused on just one program, Reading Recovery. Today, there are many programs designed to help struggling readers, and there is much research on factors that affect the impact of tutoring and other interventions. There is also much research on the effects on struggling readers of classroom programs and comprehensive school reform models that impact entire schools.

The importance of getting children off to a good start in reading cannot be overstated. In the elementary grades, success in school is virtually synonymous with success in reading, and children without strong reading skills by middle school are headed for disaster. Children who fail to read in the early grades incur so many costs to the education system, in special education, remediation, grade repetition, delinquency, and ultimate dropout, that even very expensive interventions can be justified on cost-effectiveness grounds alone, while at the same time preventing damage to young peoples’ lives. Further, reading failure is not distributed randomly, but is concentrated among schools serving many disadvantaged, minority, and limited English proficient children. It is in the early elementary grades where the gap in performance between children of different races first appears, and this gap is perhaps the most important policy issue in education in the US. On the US fourth grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2007), 43% of White children achieved at the “proficient” level, but only 14% of African American, 17% of Hispanic, and 8% of American Indian children scored at this level. In the UK and other European countries, gaps between middle class and disadvantaged students are equally problematic, and are particularly pronounced for boys and for members of various ethnic subgroups (Brooks, 2007, Harrison, 2000, Policy Exchange, 2009). Effective reading programs are important for children of all backgrounds, but for disadvantaged and many minority children and for children with learning disabilities, who particularly depend on school to achieve success, effective reading programs are especially important.

From the perspective of theory and basic research, the problem of early reading failure is reasonably well understood. A meta-analysis of basic research on the topic carried out by the US National Reading Panel (2000) identified five factors that must be emphasized if children are to succeed in reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. Another US consensus report, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), came to similar conclusions. Ysseldyke and Taylor (2007) identified problems that lead to reading difficulties, including processing deficits, deficient neuropsychological functioning, lack of sufficient experience or support at home, lack of facility in English, and insufficient preschool experience (see also Kamil et al., 2000, Harrison, 2000). However, while much is known about the characteristics of struggling readers, there is much less known about practical, replicable programs capable of helping educators prevent or remediate early reading deficits. Research in recent years has begun to evaluate a broad range of potential solutions but this newer research has not been systematically reviewed.

Because of the importance of ensuring success in reading for all children, the policy focus on the problem, and the costs involved, it is especially important to understand which types of programs are most likely to have a strong and lasting impact on the reading success of struggling children. The purpose of the present article is to review research on all types of approaches that have been evaluated as solutions for struggling readers. The article primarily addresses the US and UK policy contexts, but the review included all research available in English, and the implications of the review apply to all counties in the developed world.

As noted earlier, research on programs for struggling readers has been reviewed previously with conflicting conclusions. Wasik and Slavin (1993) reviewed research on one-to-one tutoring, concluding that tutoring had substantial positive impacts and that certified teachers obtained better results than paraprofessionals. Wasik (1997) then found positive outcomes for a variety of volunteer tutoring programs, such as those used in the federal America Reads initiative. Elbaum et al. (2000), in a review of one-to-one tutoring, focused primarily on Reading Recovery, finding positive effects but concluding (based on two small dissertations) that small-group tutorials might be as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Shanahan and Barr (1995) reviewed research on Reading Recovery and while recognizing its effectiveness, questioned its cost-effectiveness. In a recent What Works Clearinghouse practice guide, Gersten et al. (2009), in providing a research case for response to intervention, concluded that there is strong evidence to support use of small-group tutorials with struggling readers, based on 11 studies that fully or partially met the standards of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). The What Works Clearinghouse (2009) Beginning Reading Topic Report gave top ratings to Reading Recovery, though not to any of the programs cited by Gersten et al. (2009) as evidence for the effectiveness of small-group instruction. Brooks (2007) reviewed research on early interventions for reading difficulties in the UK policy context.

Few researchers or educators would doubt that one-to-one tutoring is effective for struggling readers. The questions today are beyond this and are critical for providing useful guidance to educators. After 25 years of research and reform, we want to know about long-term impacts of early intervention, about different effects of tutoring by certified teachers as opposed to paraprofessionals and volunteers, and whether small-group interventions can be as effective as one-to-one tutoring. We want to know the importance of a focus on phonics and phonological awareness in reading interventions. We want to know how to build on success in the early grades to maintain gains into secondary schools, and we want to know how improved classroom programs and technology might contribute to the success of struggling readers. Now that there is a rich diversity of approaches that have been rigorously evaluated, it is no longer enough to review tutoring or small-group interventions in isolation. Educators and policy makers deserve comparative, fair, and readily understood information about the likely impacts of alternative approaches or combinations of approaches. We also want to know more about for whom various models are likely to work and under what conditions. These are the questions that drive the current review.

The present article reviews research on the achievement outcomes of practical approaches for struggling readers, applying consistent methodological standards to the research. It is intended to provide fair summaries of the achievement effects of the full range of remedial and preventive reading approaches available to educators and policy makers, and to summarize for researchers the current state of the art in this area. The scope of the review includes all types of programs that teachers, principals, or superintendents might consider to improve the success of their struggling readers: Tutoring, small-group tutorials, teacher professional development for effective core reading instruction, and instructional technology. The review uses a form of best-evidence synthesis (Slavin, 1986), adapted for use in reviewing “what works” literatures in which there are generally few studies evaluating each of many programs (see Slavin, 2008). It is part of a series, all of which used the same methods with minor adaptations. Separate research syntheses review research on beginning and upper-elementary reading programs (Slavin, Lake, Chambers, Cheung, & Davis, 2009), middle and high school reading programs (Slavin, Cheung, Groff, & Lake, 2008), and reading programs for English language learners (Cheung & Slavin, 2005).

The synthesis of research on beginning reading programs (Slavin, Lake, Chambers, Cheung, & Davis, 2009) provides the closest background for the present review. The beginning reading review identified 63 studies that met the inclusion standards. These were divided into four categories: reading curricula (core and supplementary textbooks), instructional technology, instructional process programs (such as cooperative learning), and combinations of curricula and instructional process. Effect sizes for curricula (ES = +0.12) and for instructional technology (ES = +0.11) were low. Larger effect sizes (ES = +0.31) were found for instructional process programs, especially cooperative learning programs in which students help one another master reading comprehension skills in small teams or pairs. Effect sizes for Success for All, which combines curriculum and instructional process approaches, averaged +0.29.

Section snippets

Focus of the current review

The present review uses procedures similar to those used in the beginning reading review to examine research on programs for struggling readers. The purpose of the review is to place all types of interventions intended to enhance the achievement of students experiencing difficulties in learning to read on a common scale, to provide educators and policy makers with meaningful, unbiased information that they can use to select approaches most likely to make a difference with their students. The

Methodological issues characteristic of research on struggling readers

While a review of research on reading programs for struggling readers shares methodological issues common to all systematic reviews, there are also some key issues unique to this topic. One of these relates to measurement. In the early stages of reading, researchers often use measures such as phonemic awareness that are not “reading” in any sense, though they are precursors. The present review emphasizes measures of reading comprehension and general reading, but also accepts measures of key

Review methods

The review methods used here are similar to those used by Slavin, Lake, et al. (2009), who adapted a technique called best-evidence synthesis (Slavin, 1986, Slavin, 2008). Best-evidence syntheses seek to apply consistent, well-justified standards to identify unbiased, meaningful information from experimental studies, discussing each study in some detail, and pooling effect sizes across studies in substantively justified categories. The method is very similar to meta-analysis (Cooper, 1998,

One-to-one tutoring by teachers

One-to-one instruction from certified teachers and reading specialists is the gold standard among interventions for struggling readers. It is the most expensive solution, but the expense is more than justified if it can make a substantial difference for children at a critical point in their reading development and therefore reduce later needs for special education, remediation, or grade retention. Studies of one-to-one tutoring by teachers are summarized in Table 1, and then described in the

Tutoring by paraprofessionals and volunteers

One-to-one tutoring by certified teachers is expensive, and in high-poverty communities with shortages of teachers, allocating scarce qualified teachers to small numbers of children may be hard to justify. For those reasons, many schools have long used paraprofessionals or volunteers as tutors, usually with materials specifically designed for this purpose. Ritter et al. (2009) and Wasik (1997) reviewed research on volunteer tutoring programs, and both reported substantial positive effects.

Small-group tutorials

The most common form of remedial or supplementary instruction for struggling readers is additional teaching in small groups, typically 30–45 min daily. Since the 1960s, small-group remediation has been the predominant use of Title I funds, and it is the most common format for children with reading disabilities. Small-group tutorials are potentially more cost-effective than one-to-one tutoring from teachers, because several children are taught at the same time, and the group setting creates

Classroom instructional process programs

One potential solution to the reading problems of many struggling readers is to enhance the quality of instruction in their regular classrooms. In previous reviews of beginning reading and upper-elementary reading programs (Slavin et al., 2009a, Slavin et al., 2009b), classroom instructional process programs were clearly the most effective and well-evaluated approaches for children in general. Introduction of training in programs that have been successfully evaluated with students in general,

Classroom instructional process with tutoring (Success for All)

This section presents research on a single program, Success for All, which provides extensive school staff training and materials to improve all aspects of school organization and functioning, especially those aspects relating to reading, and also provides tutoring to struggling children, mostly first graders. The classroom interventions use a structured, fast-paced approach with a strong emphasis on cooperative learning, phonics, metacognitive skills, and frequent assessment. In second grade

Instructional technology

Over the past 30 years, one of the most common solutions applied for children who are struggling to learn to read is to give them computer-assisted instruction (CAI) software. Modern CAI programs adapt to children's specific needs and give them activities with graphics and exciting elements that can supplement classroom instruction. However, previous reviews of research on elementary CAI applications in reading find few positive effects (Dynarski et al., 2007, Kulik, 2003, Slavin et al., 2009a,

Findings on key issues

The review of programs for struggling readers examined many important questions beyond the overall outcomes of various approaches. The following sections address these questions. In each case, we consider both within-study and between-study comparisons. The within-study comparisons use the same study inclusion criteria as those applied for the main review, but in a few cases studies that compared alternative treatments but did not qualify for inclusion due to the lack of a control group

Discussion

A total of 97 studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. They compared alternative strategies for helping struggling students in the elementary grades to succeed in reading. Remarkably, 38 of these studies used random assignment to treatments, and 6 used randomized quasi-experiments. Collectively, the studies involved more than 14,000 students. Ninety of the qualifying studies took place in the US, three in England, two in Australia, and two in Canada.

Key findings of the review were as

For more information

In order to meet the page limitations of this journal, much information about the individual studies and other ancillary material appear only in a web version, available at www.bestevidence.org. The web version includes descriptions of all included studies, an appendix listing all excluded studies considered germane to the review and the reason for exclusion, and a table providing ratings of the strength of the evidence supporting particular programs. The web version will be continuously

Disclosure statement

Some of the programs reviewed, specifically Success for All and Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition, are disseminated by the nonprofit Success for All Foundation. Robert Slavin is the unpaid chairman of SFAF, Nancy Madden is the President, and Susan Davis is an employee. None of these people receives any personal royalties or other income based on the levels of use of these programs.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (Grant No. R305A040082). However, any opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent IES positions or policies.

We thank Steve Ross, Yola Center, and Jean Gross for comments on an earlier draft. We also thank Kate Misso and Michele Victor for assistance in locating references.

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