Study of the Sustained Effects of Reading Recovery in Iowa

Each year 20% or more of students entering first-grade will have severe difficulty learning to read (Clay, 1993; Shaywitz, 2003). Longitudinal research suggests that children who are the lowest achievers in first grade will continue to be the lowest achievers throughout the elementary grades (Juel, 1988). Early intervention with high-quality one-to-one instruction is critical to change the course of learning failure for the lowest-performing children (Clay, 1993; Vellutino et al., 1996). In the United States, a larger percentage of the lowest-achieving children in first grade accelerate their learning and reach grade-level performance in reading and writing with Reading Recovery intervention