Highlights from NCEE (Archive)

To help states and districts make informed decisions about the professional development they implement to improve reading instruction, the Institute of Education Sciences commissioned the Early Reading Professional Development Interventions Study to examine the impact of two research-based programs focused on second grade:

1. An 8-day content focused teacher institute series that began in the summer and continued through much of the school year, based on the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) curriculum developed by Louisa Moat and Sopris West (treatment A).
2. The same institute series plus a half-time coach for each school's second grade teachers, with coach training provided by the Consortium for Reading Excellence (CORE) (treatment B).

The study used a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the two professional development interventions in improving the knowledge and practice of teachers and the reading achievement of their students in high poverty schools. Ninety schools in six districts (with a total of 270 teachers and more than 5,000 students) were randomly assigned in equal numbers to treatment A, treatment B, or the control group, which participated in the usual professional development offered by the district. This design allowed the study team to determine the impact of each of the two interventions by comparing each treatment group's outcomes with those of the control group, and also to determine the impact of the coaching above and beyond the institute series by comparing treatment group B with treatment group A.

The study produced the following results:

• Although there were positive impacts on teacher's knowledge of scientifically based reading instruction and on one of the three instructional practices promoted by the study’s professional development, neither intervention resulted in significantly higher student test scores at the end of the one-year treatment. Teachers in schools that were randomly assigned to receive the study’s professional development scored significantly higher on the assessment of reading content and pedagogy than did teachers in control schools. Teachers in both treatment A and treatment B used explicit instruction to a significantly greater extent during their reading instruction blocks than did teachers in control schools. However, there were no statistically significant differences in achievement between students in the treatment and control schools.
• The added effect of the coaching intervention on teacher practices in the implementation year was not statistically significant. The impacts on using explicit instruction, encouraging independent student activity, and differentiating instruction were positive but these effects may be due to chance.
• There were no statistically significant impacts on measured teacher or student outcomes in the year following the treatment.

http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20084030.asp