An Analysis of the Effects of the Special Emphasis Project Upon the Reading Achievement of Elementary School Students.

The purpose of this study was to analyze and assess the effects of the Special Emphasis Reading Project and its impact upon the reading achievement of fourth and fifth grade students who participated in the project for two school years. An adjunctive focus was to examine procedures and processes used to deliver reading instruction in an attempt to underst and the findings that emerged as a result of the Special Emphasis program treatment. The Special Emphasis Reading Project was a federally-funded, educational experiment instituted for the purpose of observing the effects of reading being taught under special conditions. The project site under study was a small, urban, public school district. Six major hypotheses were tested. Each dealt with the mean reading achievement gain scores of students at one experimental and one control school. Two hundred elementary students and twenty-five staff members who provided services to project students at the experimental and control schools were investigated as a part of this study. Analysis of Special Emphasis was set within a "longitudinal" framework that involved data collection over a two-year period. The study design attempted to measure the impact of intensive readng instruction upon students participating in the project. California Achievement Test results, staff questionnaires and a classroom practices rating scale were instruments upon which the researcher relied to ascertain the effects of the Special Emphasis program on student achievement in reading. The reading test data were analyzed using "t" tests for independent samples. Quasi-qualitative procedures were used to analyze the survey data. By in large, project results were not statistically significant. In fact, for the experimental students, the mean gain in reading achievement was less than would have been expected in the absence of the project. The Special Emphasis treatment appeared to have produced a negative result. Survey data indicated that the process of implementing Special Emphasis may have served as a deterrent to significant reading gain. The influence of unmeasured process and school climate variables may have been strong enough to swamp the effects of variation in reading practice rendering the project ineffective.PhDReading instructionUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159937/1/8412145.pd