We report on the scaling up of a high school content literacy framework, Reading Apprenticeship, over a period of four years as part of the independent evaluation of an Investing in Innovation grant from the U.S. Department of Education to WestEd's Strategic Literacy Institute (SLI). Our goal was to understand the school processes that support…

This study reports on an evaluation of the "Reading Partners" program, which uses community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in underresourced elementary schools. Established in 1999 in East Menlo Park, California, the mission of "Reading Partners" is to help children become lifelong readers by…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of Achieve3000, a differentiated online literacy curriculum, on students' scores on the California State Test (CST). In the 2011-12 school year, 1,957 students in Chula Vista began using Achieve3000's solutions in 3rd through 8th grade. Using a form of propensity score matching called Inverse…

National attention has been focused on improving students' ability to read since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The California Reading First Program was implemented throughout the state with the goal of improving reading skills for students from kindergarten through third grade. This research study was designed…

The "Read Naturally[R]" program is a supplemental reading program that aims to improve reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension of elementary and middle school students using a combination of texts, audio CDs, and computer software. The program uses one of four products that share a common fluency-building strategy: "Read…

Odyssey Reading, published by CompassLearning, is a comprehensive reading/language arts program using adaptive software for core instruction. This is the first study of CompassLearning's Odyssey Reading (CLO) in PUSD and was based on data from the school years 2006-2008. For this study, Odyssey Reading was implemented in reading classes in grades…

The purpose of the study is to examine teachers' perceptions of the Open Court language program. Open Court is published by McGraw Hill and has been approved by the "No Child Left Behind Act" as an appropriate research-based reading program. The Open Court program was adopted as part of the efforts to provide all elementary school…

This study compares average SAT 9 reading scores of second through fifth grade English-only children in schools using "Open Court" (a program for teaching young children to read) with the scores of comparable schools using non-scripted programs in one very large urban school district in California. Findings show that schools using…

This study aimed to investigate the potential of the Accelerated Reader (AR) program to positively impact student scores on the English-Language Arts California Standards Test (CST). The degree of attention placed on student reading achievement and improvement in high-stakes student standardized test scores in the state of California, as well as…

THIS RESEARCH STUDY EVALUATED THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THREE METHODS OF FIRST-GRADE READING INSTRUCTION EMPLOYING SIMILAR BASAL READER STORY CONTENT. THE THREE METHODS WERE--(A) THE INSTRUCTIONAL PROCEDURES OUTLINED IN THE TEACHERS MANUAL ACCOMPANYING THE GINN BASIC READING SERIES, (B) A LEVELS-DESIGNED PROGRAM STRESSING EARLY INTENSIVE LETTER…

This study investigated the benefits of using a Web-based reading curriculum program featuring music and video, on struggling readers' performance and motivation. A sample of 36 third grade students from low socioeconomic backgrounds was randomly assigned to receive Web-based or traditional reading instruction. Analyses of performance indicated…

The authors conducted an experiment during the 2003-2004 school year to determine whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a product to help elementary students learn to read and speak English, was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than materials already in place. In the California study, 384 English…

The authors were asked to find out whether "On Our Way to English" ("OWE"), a supplementary, text-based product to help elementary school students learn to read and speak English was more effective in a California and a Texas school district than the materials the districts already had in place. They conducted an experiment…