National Assessment of Title I Final Report Volume II: Closing the Reading Gap: Findings from a Randomized Trial of Four Reading Interventions for Striving Readers

This report details findings from an experimental evaluation 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 just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the 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 identified as struggling readers. This report presents impacts on reading test scores one year after the interventions ended, when most of the students were in fourth and sixth grade, as well as impacts on state reading and mathematics test scores from the previous year. 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.