The Study of a Large Urban District's Secondary Reading Initiative Targeted at Struggling Readers

• In Event: Can University-District Partnerships Promote Educational Equity?

Abstract

Objective
This study examined the causal effects of a remedial reading course for 6th and 9th grade students on their reading test scores. The students attend school in a large urban district in Texas, and the district wants to understand the effects of the reading course on the achievement of participating students. The course is part of the Secondary Reading Initiative (SRI), where the district pays teachers to complete professional development for the reading course and financially rewards teachers for improvement in student achievement. The motivation for this study evolved out of the relationship the university and district have within their partnership.

Framework
This study was a byproduct of a university-district partnership where the partnership characteristics contributed to the district’s utilization of the research findings. Since the partnership was established in 2011, the lessons learned from collaborating include the importance of developing relationships of trust, communicating with different stakeholders, and building a joint research infrastructure (Turley & Stevens, 2015).

The focus on struggling readers at the secondary level, whose teachers typically are not trained for reading instruction, and the scale of the study sample (18,000 students) advances the field’s knowledge on reading interventions at the secondary level. In addition to examining a large-scale intervention in reading, it also examines the effects of financial incentives for teachers tied to student achievement gains, a relatively new concept to the field (e.g. Behrman, Parker, Todd, and Wolpin, April 2015)

Methods
To evaluate the effectiveness of participating in this remedial reading course, two approaches were used to compare differences in test score gains for students that sit right above (barely ineligible) or below (barely eligible) the 50th percentile on the tests used to determine eligibility. The first approach examines the impact of the course with an Intent To Treat (ITT) analysis. Eligible students are considered part of the treatment group only if they met the criteria for eligibility. The second approach is a Localized Average Treatment Effect (LATE) that attempts to provide a better sense of the effect that the course has on eligible students identified as receiving the treatment.

Results
The reading course associated with SRI does not appear to have produced positive effects in its first two years of implementation. For example, on average, 6th and 9th grade students who were marginally eligible for the SRI intervention show no significant reading test score gains relative to those students who were marginally ineligible. In Year 2, students with the lowest reading scores (not those marginally eligible) showed more substantial reading gains, but it is not clear whether these gains are due to SRI, as the relationship could not be examine through an RDD analysis.

Significance
In addition to scholarly significance, these results have been utilized by the district to adjust the professional development for teachers, to adjust the measures of student achievement influencing the incentives for teachers, to adjust the test score cut-off used to determine eligibility, and to further assess the fidelity of implementation of the course.

Authors

• Ruth Lopez Turley, Rice University

• Carla J. Stevens, Houston Independent School District