Effectiveness of Selected Supplemental Reading Comprehension Interventions: Impacts on a First Cohort of Fifth-Grade Students

There are increasing cognitive demands on student knowledge in middle elementary grades
where students become primarily engaged in reading to learn, rather than learning to read (Chall
1983). Children from disadvantaged backgrounds often lack general vocabulary, as well as
vocabulary related to academic concepts that enable them to comprehend what they are reading
and acquire content knowledge (Hart and Risley 1995). They also often do not know how to use
strategies to organize and acquire knowledge from informational text in content areas such as
science and social studies (Snow and Biancarosa 2003). Instructional approaches for improving
comprehension are not as well developed as those for decoding and fluency (Snow 2002).
Although multiple techniques for direct instruction of comprehension in narrative text have been
well demonstrated in small studies, there is not as much evidence on teaching reading
comprehension within content areas (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
2000).
Improving the ability of disadvantaged students to read and comprehend text is an important
element in federal education policy aimed at closing the achievement gap. Title I of the No Child
Left Behind Act (NCLB) calls on educators to close the gap between low- and high-achieving
students using approaches that scientifically based research has shown to be effective. Such
rigorous research is relatively scarce, however, so it is difficult for educators to determine how
best to use Title I funds to improve student outcomes. Identifying interventions that improve
reading comprehension is part of this challenge.
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the Department of Education (ED) has
undertaken a rigorous evaluation of curricula designed to improve reading comprehension as one
step toward meeting that research challenge. In 2004, ED contracted with Mathematica Policy
Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractors to conduct the study.1 The study team worked with
ED to refine the study design and select the curricula to be tested, and then recruited districts and
schools, collected data on implementation and outcomes, and analyzed the data. The study was
conducted based on a rigorous experimental design for assessing the effects of four reading
comprehension curricula on reading comprehension among fifth-grade students in selected
districts across the country, where schools were randomly assigned to use one of the four
treatment curricula or to a control group.