Federal Reading Review Overlooks Popular Texts

Research-based reform difficult to navigate.

When a federal review of beginning-reading programs was commissioned four years ago, experts and educators hoped it would help school leaders sift through the vast marketplace of instructional materials and find those most effective for improving achievement. But the long-awaited study by the What Works Clearinghouse , released this month, may not fully deliver on that promise.

In fact, the analysis found that few comprehensive or supplemental programs have empirical proof that they work. And none of the most popular commercial programs on the market—including McGraw-Hill’s Open Court, Scott Foresman Reading, and Houghton Mifflin Reading, which have earned hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to districts—had sufficiently rigorous studies to be included in the review by the clearinghouse.

“They tended not to have studies with randomized-control trials or with experimental designs that met the clearinghouse’s evidence standards,” said Jill Constantine, the principal...