How Effective Are Early Grade Reading Interventions? : A Review of the Evidence

Graham, Jimmy ; Kelly, Sean

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: EDUCATION QUALITY;    EDUCATION POLICY;    LITERACY;    EARLY GRADE READING;    READING;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8292
RP-ID  :  WPS8292

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

It is imperative that students learn toread in the early grades, yet many fail to do so indeveloping countries. Early grade reading interventions haveemerged as a common means to attempt to address thisproblem. This paper presents a definition of early gradereading interventions as interventions that employ acombination of five components: at a minimum, they musttrain teachers to teach reading using simplifiedinstructional techniques and evidence-based curricula. Inaddition, they typically include in-class coaching and theprovision of instructional guidelines, instructionalmaterials, or tools for student assessment. To develop abetter understanding of the effectiveness of theinterventions, the paper summarizes evidence from 18 earlygrade reading interventions, occurring across a largevariety of contexts, including four World Bank regions andthree World Bank income groups. The study finds that earlygrade reading interventions are consistently effective,although not infallible. The large majority had highlysignificant impacts on at least one reading subtask.However, only for a few interventions were effect sizeslarge enough to equate to more than a year's worth ofschooling or create fluent readers on average. The cost ofimplementation varied widely, but some programs were highlycost-effective. Some programs failed to achieve impactaltogether, although these programs were in the minority. Inshort, early grade reading interventions are not aguaranteed means to improve reading, and they rarely lead tofluency over a short span of time, but they are a mostlyreliable means to make significant improvements in literacyover a short period of time.