The Effect of Direct Instruction Reading Remediation for Fourth Graders

This study was to determine if below average readers in a reading remediation class receiving Direct Instruction reading would make larger gains in reading than average to above average readers who received whole language based reading instruction. These were 69 students in the study. Students were assigned to cohorts based on test performance on the Development Reading Assessment (DRA) and administrative recommendations. Instruction was provided for 5 months for the experimental group (n=36) using Scientific Research Associates Corrective Reading (a Direct Instruction reading program). The control group (n=11) received 5 months of reading instruction in a locally designed whole language reading and grammar program. The data were analyzed using a one way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The significance level used to test the hypothesis was .05. The F value was found to be 4.53 (df 1,92). Thus the null hypothesis was rejected. There is a significant difference in the reading achievement between groups. Limitations for this study concern the use of the DRA. Recommendations for this study would be using a more sensitive pre and post assessment tool to determine reading gains