The 1-to-1 tutoring program Reading Recovery boosted struggling 1st graders’ reading skills in the final evaluation for its $45.6 million federal Investing in Innovation grant.
Evaluators from the University of Pennsylvania’s Consortium for Policy Research in Education also found the program surpassed its training-expansion goals, with more than 3,700 teachers trained. And, in a randomized controlled trial of nearly 6,900 students in 1,200 schools, 1st graders who participated in Reading Recovery for 12-20 weeks showed reading gains equal to 18 percentage points on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills Total Reading assessment. That was more than 130 percent higher than the national average growth rate for 1st graders, and both English-language learners and rural students showed equally strong benefits.
However, the study did not find that students who participated in Reading Recovery sustained their gains on state reading tests in 3rd grade.
