Redesigning the Core Literacy Block: A Two-Year Evaluation Study

Abstract

This evaluation study explored a two-year literacy reform effort in a school district with 10 of its 13 elementary schools in the improvement process. Schools were placed in three groups. Group 1 (four schools, 80 teachers) implemented new instructional practices in Year 1 and then added a new curriculum. Group 2 (four schools, 102 teachers) changed both the pedagogy and curriculum for both years. Group 3 (five schools, 107 teachers) did not make any changes in Year 1 and then implemented both components. After propensity score matching students, reading scores were analyzed with three-level change score models. Results suggested that two years of the combined reforms generally were effective at improving students’ oral reading fluency, and two years of the pedagogical changes were effective at improving students’ performance on a computer-adaptive test of overall reading ability. However, improvements on the computer-adaptive test as well as the state reading test were small, which might reflect the stability in reading comprehension found in other studies.