Overview

Findings presented in this topic report summarize the first wave of WWC beginning reading intervention reports produced in 2006–07. www.whatworks.ed.gov

WWC reviewed 887 studies of 153 beginning reading programs

Addressing the needs of beginning readers

This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) topic review addresses a variety of programs and products developed to address the needs of beginning readers. For the current wave of reports, we focused on replicable programs or products for students in the early elementary settings (that is, grades K–3) including: core reading curricula, programs, or products to be used as supplements to other reading instruction, programs that focus on staff development, and literacy software. The WWC review on beginning reading focuses on reading interventions for students in kindergarten through grade 3 intended to increase skills in alphabetics, reading fluency, comprehension, or general reading achievement.

Because there are so many reading interventions and studies in Beginning Reading, the What Works Clearinghouse set priorities for programs to be reviewed first. They included those that, on initial screening, had studies with the strongest (most rigorous) designs and those that, on initial screening, had the most studies.¹

We looked at 887 studies of 153 programs that qualified for our review. Of these, 51 studies of 24 programs met our evidence standards, 27 without reservations and 24 with reservations.² The remaining 129 programs had no studies that met the WWC evidence screens. Of these, 92 programs had one or more studies that were reviewed and did not meet WWC evidence screens. Thirty-seven programs did not have any outcomes studies.

In looking at the four outcome domains for the 24 interventions, 10 interventions had positive effects or potentially positive effects in all the outcome domains addressed in their studies (see table 1). Eleven interventions had a combination of positive or potentially positive effects in one or two domains while having mixed, negative, or no discernible effects in other domains. Three had only mixed effects or no discernible effects across domains.