Reading Recovery and the At-Risk First Grade Students

A school district located in the southern region of the United States is implementing the Reading Recovery (RR) Program in 10 elementary schools. The RR program is an initiative to help elementary schools improve student learning, especially in the area of reading. A broad literature review framed this quantitative investigation. The overall evaluation question that guided this study was the impact of the RR program on schools ' Stanford reading test scores. A quantitative-oriented evaluation methodology was used, specifically a quasi-experimental research design with post-test only (N = 20 schools). The continuous assessment system of the county under study provided the instrumentation. Schools were matched on four socio-economic characteristics, including percentage of students participating on the free/reduced lunch program. Findings indicated that, after one-year intervention in first grade, the RR program schools had higher vocabulary and phonetics scores than the control schools; and the control schools had higher reading comprehension test scores than the RR schools. Implications for policy, practice, and further research are discussed. Contains 18 references and 3 tables of data. Appendixes contain individual school data. (Author/RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document