Newly released report of Reading Recovery’s “large positive effects” Read more…

August 30, 2013

To:         Michigan Administrators, Educators, and

Fr:         Dr. Mary K. Lose, Director, Reading Recovery Center of Michigan at Oakland University

Re:        Investing in Innovation (i3) Reading Recovery Scale-Up in the United States:

             Year One 2011-2012 Evaluation Report

The newly-released year one report of the i3 Scale-Up of Reading Recovery in the United States reports “large positive effects on student literacy performance overall, and these positive effects were also large for ELL students and students in rural schools.” 

This independent evaluation by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education has great potential to inform policy makers, school decision makers, and Reading Recovery educators across America and around the world.  In addition to reporting the large and positive results for students, the evaluation also included:

• The i3 Scale-up program oversight and recruitment efforts – “Overall, recruitment in the first two years of the scale-up was 24% below target for teachers, 44% above target for schools, and 12% below target for students.”

• Training of new Reading Recovery teachers – “Many RR teachers reported their RR teaching was transformative in terms of their own instruction and understanding about literacy.” 

• Implementation Fidelity – “School-level implementation of RR was, in most respects, faithful to the Reading Recovery Standards and Guidelines.”

• Reading Recovery as a potential lever for school change – “While it is still too early to say whether RR is inspiring systemic organizational changes, two things are clear.  First, Reading Recovery is positively affecting student literacy outcomes, and second, RR teachers are sharing their new knowledge, strategies, and information with other teachers in their schools.”