Meeting Readers Where They Are: Personalized Instructional Support for Grade 1-5 Striving Readers

• In Event: Data-Driven Approaches to Supporting Striving Learners in the Post-Pandemic Era

Abstract

Study Objective
This study examines the impact of a personalized instructional program on literacy achievement among grade 1–5 striving readers–defined as students performing at least one grade level below their enrolled grade in the fall–using a quasi-experimental design.
Perspectives
This study is grounded in the perspective that personalized instruction can play a pivotal role in addressing the learning needs of striving readers. The instructional program examined–i-Ready Personalized Instruction (PI)–is a research-based program designed for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. After students complete the i-Ready Diagnostic in the fall, the program generates a customized lesson plan with a differentiated starting point for each reader across key reading domains. Applying this data-informed, student-centered instructional approach is particularly important for striving readers who may benefit most from individualized support.
Methods
Because schools were not randomly assigned to implement PI for Reading, we employed propensity score matching (PSM; Stuart, 2010) for a quasi-experimental design. Using the MatchIt package (Ho et al., 2011) in R version 4.4.0 (R Core Team, 2024), we first matched schools and then students to construct comparable treatment and comparison groups.
The final school-level matching used 1:1 nearest neighbor matching with a caliper of 0.2 and exact matching on school locale. Covariates included school enrollment, locale, racial/ethnic composition, median household income, percentage of students in district receiving special education services, percentage of multilingual learners in district, and average fall reading scores.
From the matched school sample, we identified striving readers and conducted student-level PSM. The final student-level matching used 1:1 nearest neighbor matching, including fall reading scores and exact matching on phonics placement level, grade, race/ethnicity, English learner (EL) status, disability status, and gender. (See Tables 1-2 in Appendix B for student baseline equivalence.)
We used multilevel modeling to estimate the effect of PI on literacy achievement, accounting for clustering at the school level. Models included student-level (Level 1) and school-level (Level 2) covariates.
Data Sources
The study used an analytic sample consisting of grade 1-5 striving readers nationwide during the 2023-24 SY. Literacy achievement was measured using the i-Ready Diagnostic for Reading overall reading scale score. Consistent PI usage was defined as a binary indicator of whether a student consistently used the instructional program at least 30 minutes per week for a minimum of 18 weeks.
Results
Consistent PI usage had a positive and statistically significant effect on striving readers’ literacy achievement (B =3.32, p <0.001), controlling for baseline literacy achievement and other key covariates, with a random intercept for school. (See Table 3 in Appendix B for more details.)
Significance
This study is among the first to examine the impact of a personalized learning program on supporting striving readers in developing foundational literacy skills. Findings indicate that consistently using personalized instructional support significantly improves literacy outcomes for striving readers. These results underscore the potential of personalized instruction to help close literacy achievement gaps among elementary students.

Authors

• Juno Yingzhi Dong, University of California - Los Angeles

• Lauren Stargel, Curriculum Associates