In recent years, countries including the UK and USA have seen advancements in the use of Randomised Controlled Trials in education, progress that has not been mirrored in Ireland. Ireland does not have a strong tradition of using experimental or quasi-experimental evaluation designs for monitoring and evaluation of education policy despite…

Background: The need for evidence-based, effective interventions is especially great in literacy -- particularly for young students, mastering early literacy skills is predictive of later school success (Slavin et al., 2011). Understanding the relationship between letters and sounds, also known as the alphabetic principle, is essential for…

Reading proficiency scores are the topic of many discussions in school districts nationwide. Low state test scores and current Science of Reading Research are driving many states to enact legislation to improve reading instruction. In order to better understand literacy instruction, a literature review explores the varied approaches to reading…

Headsprout Early Reading is a computer-based program designed on behavioral principles to enhance the basic skills that underpin the initial development of reading. In a within and between groups design, and using primary schools within Northern Ireland that had a currently high proportion of disadvantaged pupils, children who were behind their…

Reading abilities in Swedish students have declined in recent decades. The current study examined the effectiveness of a full-scale three-tier Response to Intervention (RtI) model designed to improve reading skills in Swedish students. Participants were grade 2 students in a primary school setting. A quasi-experimental between-group design was…

Naomi Stockley, Rianna Tatana, Roshni Kaur, and Alice Reynolds offer some early insights into the implementation of Sounds-Write at The Pavilion School, a specialist provision in the northern suburbs of Melbourne for vulnerable students who have been excluded from mainstream education and face significant personal challenges. [For the complete…

To estimate the long-term effects of the Reading Recovery® intervention, a regression discontinuity design (RD) was implemented in a randomly selected sample of Reading Recovery schools during each year of the federally-funded i3 Scale-Up external evaluation (2011-2015) and also in one additional cohort during the 2016-2017 school year. Long-term…

This study examines the impacts of two AmeriCorps programs, Minnesota Reading Corps and Wisconsin Reading Corps, where AmeriCorps volunteers provide literacy tutoring to at-risk kindergarten through third-grade (K-3) students utilizing a response-to-intervention framework. This evaluation replicates a prior randomized controlled trial evaluation…

Conducting classroom-based educational research trials is important for establishing the efficacy and effectiveness of specific instructional interventions. Such endeavours, however, are challenging to implement. This was made evident during a recent independent evaluation of the efficacy of the MiniLit program, wherein various difficulties…

In this paper, we present insights from the qualitative data collected during a process evaluation of a reading intervention project carried out in primary and secondary schools in West Yorkshire, England. Commercially available reading interventions, financed by the Strategic School Improvement Fund, were delivered by school staff to…

To estimate the long-term effects of the Reading Recovery® intervention, a regression discontinuity design (RD) was implemented in a randomly selected sample of Reading Recovery schools during each year of the federally-funded i3 Scale-Up external evaluation (2011-2015) and also in one additional cohort during the 2016-17 school year. Long-term…

Istation is a digital-based instructional intervention tool for various content areas aimed at pre-K through 8th grade learners. The Istation Reading program consists of formative assessments, named Istation Indicators of Progress (ISIP™), which are computer-adaptive and diagnostic literacy assessments designed to track student growth over time.…

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 requires the use of evidence in adopting programs, particularly for children with reading disabilities. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to evaluate the effects of a literacy intervention called Helping Early Readers Obtain Excellence in Special Education (HEROES), developed for children ages six to…

This mixed methods study was designed for two purposes: (1) to provide district and campus leaders data about the effectiveness of how the studied district's READ 180 and System 44 literacy intervention programs were implemented, and (2) to assess the programs' impact on student outcomes to determine whether the district was meeting literacy goals…

At a Title I School located in Central Georgia, 91% of the student population is performing below grade level. Lexia-Core 5 is a reading software program purchased by a Central Georgia school district to help students improve in reading. The purpose of this quantitative descriptive and causal-comparative study was to examine the impact of the…