Implementation fidelity is often thought of as a necessary condition to achieve internal validity and as having a relation to student outcomes. This relation is increasingly modeled; we reviewed reading intervention studies for students in pre-K-12 in which measures of implementation fidelity were included in final data analysis. A systematic…

Early reading skills are strongly associated with long term academic and life achievement. Despite the recognized importance of literacy, indicators point to a literacy crisis in the United States. Research and policies have highlighted the necessity of selecting reading programs with documented effectiveness and implementing them with fidelity.…

Response to intervention (RTI) is a valuable framework for providing effective and equitable educational opportunities to all students; however, recent research indicates that RTI programs are not achieving their potential for promoting student learning. As schools develop, implement, and sustain RTI systems, they would benefit from the addition…

Middle school reading scores throughout the state of California have been predominantly less than average in recent years. A school located within this region has struggled to raise reading scores. An unknown problem existed that stemmed from the implementation of the school's reading program. The purpose of this investigation was to (a) determine…

Background/Context: Despite increasing school enrollment, significant literacy gaps persist in developing countries, with many children unable to read by age 10. This paper evaluates "M'ap Li Net Ale," a comprehensive intervention aimed at improving early-grade reading skills in Haiti, a context characterized by limited government…

There is growing pressure to make efficacy experiments more useful. This requires attending to the twin goals of generalizing experimental results to those schools that will use the results and testing the intervention's theory of action. We show how electronic records, created naturally during the daily operation of technology-based…

Students who struggle to read at an early age are likely to continue struggling for not only the rest of their schooling, but the rest of their lives. Schools need to begin adopting research-based reading programs and measuring their effectiveness formatively throughout the school year. Research suggests that effective reading programs need to…

Purpose: The effectiveness of the 14-component evidence-based whole-school reform Success for All (SfA) has been well established, but research on its implementation is limited although fidelity of implementation is vital for the effectiveness of such a program. This review sheds light on this issue. Design/Approach/Methods: A systematic…

RAND Europe evaluated the implementation of a technology-based intervention that made use of the Microsoft Immersive Reader (IR) in UK classrooms for eight- and nine-year-old pupils. This is the first evaluation of this intervention that uses a randomised control trial (RCT) design, following promising findings related to the use of IR from a…

This study investigated the impact of a computer-adaptive reading program, Waterford Early Learning (WEL), in an elementary school in Indiana. The study investigated how educational technology, specifically computer-assisted instruction (CAI), would impact the literacy scores of kindergarten students when paired with traditional instruction:…

New technologies have had a large and transformative impact on education. This study explored the benefits of a comprehensive, computer-adaptive reading program for the literacy skills of young learners. Second grade students enrolled in a public school district used a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) program and were evaluated at the beginning…

We present results of an evaluation of the first year of a multi-year comprehensive middle school reading program. Four public middle schools in rural Virginia with large populations of students with limited reading proficiency participated in a study to determine the reading program's impact. We evaluated 235 students with low reading achievement…

In a common approach for scaling up effective educational practice, schools adopt evidence-based programs to be implemented with fidelity. An alternative approach assumes that programs should be adapted to local contexts. In this randomized trial of a reading intervention, we study a scaffolded sequence of implementation in which schools first…

Reading skills are the key building blocks of a child's formal education. Yet, the national statistics on literacy attainment are profoundly distressing: two out of three American fourth graders are reading below grade level and almost one third of children nationwide lack even basic reading skills. This study reports on an evaluation of the…

This multiyear scale-up effectiveness study of Open Court Reading (OCR) involved approximately 4,500 students and more than 1,000 teachers per year in Grades K-5 from 49 elementary schools in seven districts across the country. Using a school-level cluster randomized trial design, we assessed the implementation and effectiveness of Open Court…