The What Works Clearinghouse of the U.S. Department of Education explored the question of whether the Reading Recovery short-term tutoring intervention is effective with English-language learners, but it didn’t come up with an answer.
According to a report published by the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences, the clearinghouse wasn’t able to draw a conclusion about the impact of the intervention because the 13 studies it identified about the use of Reading Recovery with ELLs didn’t meet its evidence standards, which is not unusual for clearinghouse reviews.
The clearinghouse ruled out eight studies because they didn’t have control groups that could be compared with the treatment groups of students. Three others were ruled out because the control groups weren’t considered comparable to the treatment groups before the start of the interventions.
Developed for struggling beginning readers, Reading Recovery provides one-on-one tutoring, generally in pullout sessions, by trained teachers for half an hour each day for 12 to 20 weeks, according to the report.
