Do Literacy-Focused and Content-Rich Texts Make a Difference for Reading Achievement in the Primary Grades?

• In Event: Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling in Educational Research

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to investigate elementary teachers’ pattern of adopting content-rich (e.g. trade books) and literacy-focused (e.g. decodables) texts, and whether it predicts student reading achievement over and above the usual confounders.

Method: Based on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K: 2011), we use exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to determine latent factor structure across 12 text types. We then use the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) combined with the Marginal Structural Models (MSM) to estimate the impact of text exposure on reading achievement.
Findings: Schools with higher proportions of low-income students tend to use more literacy-focused texts. Moreover, heavier doses of literacy-focused texts in the second grade are negatively associated with reading achievement, especially among students with lower baseline performance.

Authors

• Yi Shang, John Carroll University

• Dan Reynolds, SRI International