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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: 1-800-548-4998
Baltimore, April 5 – Students
who attend Success for All schools for 3 years gained
substantially more in reading skills than similar students
in other schools, according to a federally funded study.
Differences were equivalent to about half of the minority-White
achievement gap. The study, led by Dr. Geoffrey Borman
of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examined 35
high-poverty elementary schools across the United States.
Schools were assigned at random to use Success for All
or to continue using their regular reading programs
from Kindergarten through Grade 2. Most students were
African-American (57%), 10% were Hispanic, and 74% qualified
for free- or reduced-price lunches. The study schools
were in inner-city Chicago; Indianapolis; Greensboro,
NC; and a number of smaller districts.
What sets this study apart is its
use of the rigorous evaluation methods common in large-scale
medical research but rare in education. Such research,
referred to as a “randomized control trial,”
assigns schools by the flip of a coin to either use
a specific intervention (in this case, Success for All)
or to serve as a control group (in this case, to continue
using whatever reading program the school already had).
This type of extremely rigorous research, funded by
the Institute for Education Sciences, corresponds with
of the explicit goals of the U.S. Department of Education:
to transform education into an evidence-based field.
This study was notably among the largest experimental
studies ever done in education, involving 35 schools
serving more than 16,000 students. With such large numbers,
the study reflects real-world conditions, across different
locales, teachers, students, school leaders, and local
circumstances.
The study validates the many previous
studies of Success for All that have found similar outcomes.
Students in Success for All schools average a full grade-equivalent
ahead of their peers by fifth grade. Students are half
as likely to have been retained in grade or referred
to special education. Success for All schools routinely
achieve outstanding results with populations of students
frequently considered to be the most at-risk: minority
students, English-language learners, and students who
live in extreme poverty. Many researchers, most recently
the American Institutes for Research’s Comprehensive
School Reform Quality Institute, have concluded that
Success for All has the best evidence of effectiveness
across school reform models.
This study is available here
and a summary table is available here
More than 1,200 schools, mostly high-poverty Title I
schools, in 46 states are currently implementing the
program with external assistance provided by the not-for-profit
Success for All Foundation. The intervention is purchased
as a comprehensive package, which includes materials,
training, ongoing professional development, and a “blueprint”
for implementing and sustaining school improvement.
Success for All organizes instruction and resources
to attempt to ensure that every child will reach the
third grade on time and read on grade level, and will
continue to build on those skills. Rather than remediation,
Success for All emphasizes prevention and early, intensive
intervention designed to detect and resolve reading
problems as early as possible, before they become serious.
The study will be presented
by Dr. Borman at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the
American Education Research Association in San Francisco.
More information on the meeting is at www.AERA.net.
Draft copies of A Three-Year Randomized Evaluation of
Success for All: Final Reading Outcomes are available
here
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