A Longitudinal Case Study of a Literacy Program titled Reading Recovery for Students in a Struggling Midwestern School District

This study followed a cohort of students from Grade 1 to Grade 11 in one struggling school district that had Reading Recovery (RR) in the Grade 1. The RR program is an intervention given only to students in the Grade 1 who are reading below grade level on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Assessment. The researched district had a high poverty, high mobility, and high minority population of students. One hundred and seventy-three students participated in the RR program for 12 to 20 weeks while they were in Grade 1. Studies have shown that these students are able to retain their grade level reading ability and are more likely to graduate. For this study, the following data were gathered: Missouri Assessment Program communication arts data, pre and post Gates-MacGinitie Reading Assessment scores, end of course high school exam scores, English grades, and enrollment in high school English courses. Unfortunately, only 24 students from the original cohort were still in the district in the Grade 11, and some of these students had incomplete data sets. This demonstrated the difficultly in evaluating the success of programs in a struggling district with a high mobility rate. Thus, this study is mostly descriptive, analyzing the implementation of RR and presenting the district as a case study. A single factor ANOVA determined there is no difference between the averages for the RR sample compared to the average of the total school population. Results indicated that students who participated in RR in the Grade 1 remained on an average level throughout their junior year in high school. Recommendations for future research include a larger sample size, although this is difficult with highly mobile student populations, and a comparison group with similar demographics. Practitioners should consider the importance of RR training for all teachers in the building or a supplementary program to provide continuing support for students throughout their academic career. Although RR has shown tremendous success in previous studies, evaluating the long term impact of the program was difficult to determine