Reading Programs Yield Few Gains in Comprehension

A federal study of supplemental programs that are intended to improve students’ reading comprehension has found that only one of the three programs examined actually did so.

The report , released May 5, focuses on the second and final year of research into the reading programs. It concludes that ReadAbout, a computer-based program by Scholastic Inc., improved students’ comprehension of social studies texts when the teacher had a previous year’s experience with the program. The size of the effect after an academic year of instruction was the equivalent of moving a student from the 50th to the 59th percentile, the researchers said.

ReadAbout showed no statistically significant effect, however, on tests measuring students’ comprehension of reading more generally, or of science texts, or for students whose teachers were in their first year...