The purpose of this article is to describe a 40+ year journey during which researchers have endeavored to design and evaluate an integrated, empirically based reading intervention for secondary students and to chronicle the lessons learned as well as suggest future directions for this type of work. Initial development of the intervention began in…

Because of the importance of teaching reading comprehension to struggling young readers and the infrequency with which it has been implemented and evaluated, we designed a comprehensive first-grade reading comprehension program. We conducted a component analysis of the program's decoding/fluency and reading comprehension dimensions (DF and COMP),…

Reading skills are an important component of academic success for school-age youth, and are associated with increased academic performance and positive attitudes about school. The presence of an animal appears to reduce stress during reading. Therefore, the goal of this study was to assess the feasibility and effects of a 6-week after-school…

Children who do not adequately master the transition from "learning to read" (LTR) to "reading to learn" (RTL) will clearly fall behind in every subject area during their secondary education. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a simple reading comprehension strategy developed by Schumaker, Denton, and Deshler…

The articles in this special issue discuss efforts to improve academic reading outcomes for students and ways to achieve high implementation fidelity of promising strategies. At times the authors discuss if--and how--strong fidelity is associated with strong outcomes and potentially even impacts (the difference between program and control group…

Remediating student learning deficits in the area of reading is of the utmost importance, as the ability to read has a lifelong impact on learning. Schools and school districts are ranked on their ability to demonstrate growth in core areas of education, including reading. Although many programs, strategies, and remedies are extant for identifying…

Fifty 2nd- and 3rd-grade students identified as experiencing difficulty reading were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. In the experimental group, students received a reading intervention called Read Two Impress for a total of 360 min. Students in the control continued to receive regular instruction from their teacher. A 2 × 3…

This report summarizes the results of a cluster-randomized field trial that estimated the effect of "BURST[R]: Reading" on primary grades students' early literacy achievement. BURST is a widely adopted supplemental reading program designed for use with students struggling to acquire early literacy skills and is meant to provide…

During the 2017-2018 school year, SEG Measurement conducted a study of the effectiveness of Imagine Language & Literacy, an online system that provides individualized adaptive instruction and breaks down skills into component parts to help students become proficient readers. The study was conducted in three districts in Texas. Research…

This study explores the efficacy of the Waterford Early Reading program (ERP) for teaching kindergarten and first grade students' early reading concepts. Students attended 3 elementary schools in Alabama. The treatment group used the software program whereas the control group did not use the software. Analyses revealed a significant treatment…

Some claim that good and poor readers continue their trajectories despite intervention. This quasi-experimental study examined whether the READ 180 program helps general education, below-grade-level, Title I pre-adolescent readers improve. Participants included 82 students, grades 4-8, in public Title I elementary and middle schools. Results…

An initiative in which therapy dogs were integrated into a school-wide reading curriculum was analyzed to determine the effect on student reading in the program's second year. Prior research on the first year of this specific program (Kirnan et al. in "Early Child Educ J" 44(6):637-651) demonstrated improvement in reading scores only for…

Background/Context: In a recent review of culturally relevant instruction and reading comprehension, Fairbanks, Cooper, Masterson, and Webb (2009) highlighted the paucity of research available to support the widespread claim in the literacy field that "students' social and cultural practices are deeply intertwined with literacy learning"…

UPSTART is an in-home preschool program that uses CAI [computer-assisted instruction] to provide children an individualized reading curriculum. UPSTART forms a partnership with parents to ensure their children use the program for fifteen minutes per day, five days per week. This report summarizes the results of seven years of data. Data was…

This study evaluated the efficiency of the Lexia Reading Program in 132 early elementary school students in an inner-city school in Hartford, Connecticut. Students who met the criteria were assigned to the experimental Lexia group, and other students were randomly assigned to a comparison group. The NWEA MAP was used to provide pre and post…