|
Full Report  (2 MB) || Educator's Summary (464 KB ) || Educator's Guide (584 KB)
A total of 96 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, 39 of these studies used random assignment to treatments, and five used randomized quasi-experiments. Collectively, the studies involved more than 14,000 children.
Conclusions of the review were as follows.
1. One-to-one tutoring works. Teachers are more effective as tutors than paraprofessionals or volunteers, and an emphasis on phonics greatly improves tutoring outcomes.
2. Although one-to-one phonetic tutoring for first graders is highly effective, effects last into the upper elementary grades only if classroom interventions continue past first grade.
3. Small group tutorials can be effective, but are not as effective as one-to-one instruction by teachers or paraprofessionals.
4. Classroom instructional process approaches, especially cooperative learning and structured phonetic models, have strong effects for low achievers (as well as other students).
5. Traditional computer-assisted instruction programs have little impact on reading. |
