title: Intensive Reading Remediation in Grade 2 or 3: Are There Effects a Decade Later?
abstract: Despite data supporting the benefits of early reading interventions, there has been little evaluation of the long-term educational impact of these interventions, with most follow-up studies lasting less than two years (Suggate, 2010). This study evaluated reading outcomes more than a decade after the completion of an 8-month reading intervention using a randomized design with second and third graders selected on the basis of poor word-level skills (Blachman et al., 2004). Fifty-eight (84%) of the original 69 participants took part in the study. The treatment group demonstrated a moderate to small effect size advantage on reading and spelling measures over the comparison group. There were statistically significant differences with moderate effect sizes between treatment and comparison groups on standardized measures of word recognition (i.e., Woodcock Basic Skills Cluster,d= 0.53; Woodcock Word Identification,d= 0.62), the primary, but not exclusive, focus of the intervention. Statistical tests on other reading and spelling measures did not reach thresholds for statistical significance. Patterns in the data related to other educational outcomes, such as high school completion, favored the treatment participants, although differences were not significant.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Reading and Language Arts Center, Syracuse University.
authors.forename: Benita A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Blachman
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Florida Center for Reading Research, Florida State University.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schatschneider
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Houston.
authors.forename: Jack M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Fletcher
authors.affiliation: Department of Curriculum and Instruction, State University of New York at Oswego.
authors.forename: Maria S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Murray
authors.affiliation: Reading and Language Arts Center, Syracuse University; Department of Counseling and Psychological Services at State University of New York at Oswego.
authors.forename: Kristen A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Munger
authors.affiliation: School of Social Work, St. Louis University.
authors.forename: Michael G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Vaughn
keywords: longitudinal effects; reading difficulties; reading intervention; remediation