Issue In Focus

Do Widely Used Interventions Help Close the Reading Gap?

The nation’s 16,000 school districts are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on educational products and services to help struggling readers. Yet we know little about the effectiveness of these interventions. A new report details findings from an experimental evaluation of parts or all of four widely used programs for elementary school students with reading problems—Corrective Reading, Failure Free Reading, Spell Read P.A.T., and Wilson Reading. Conducted in Pennsylvania's Allegheny Intermediate Unit, the evaluation explored the extent to which the programs affect both word-level reading and reading comprehension skills of students in grades three and five. Key findings show that the interventions improved some reading skills but did not improve state test scores. Furthermore, younger students benefited more, and the interventions narrowed some reading gaps. Read more.