Summary of Reading Progress

SUMMARY: THE IMPACT OF THE BEN BRONZ READING CURRICULUM ON STUDENT PERFORMANCE FROM 1991-92 THROUGH 1997-98
Wells Hively, Aileen Stan Spence, Ian Spence and Susan Sharp

The Learning Incentive and Ben Bronz Academy

In a study involving all students who attended Ben Bronz Academy from school year 1991-92 through school year 1996-97, the Ben Bronz Remedial Reading Curriculum produced very substantial growth, as measured by the Gates MacGinitie and the Wide Range Achievement Tests. Nine out of ten of the students who entered with below average scores reached or exceeded normal, annual rates of growth on both of the tests during their first year of attendance at Ben Bronz Academy. The average first-year gain exceeded one-half of a standard deviation on both tests.

Gains on the tests were unrelated to students' intelligence, despite a wide range of entering IQs. However, gains were inversely related to entering competence as measured by the Gates and WRAT pretests. In other words, the lower the pretest scores, the greater the progress.

For the Gates Test, which measures vocabulary and comprehension, the main impact of the curriculum comes in the first year. In subsequent years students tend to progress at the average rate of the norm group. For the WRAT, which measures decoding and recognition, the impact spreads more uniformly over the first three years.

What accounts for the success of the curriculum? The following elements are probably important:

The overall consistency and intensity of the program
The large proportion of the school day specifically devoted to reading
The high time-on-task generated by the Direct Instruction techniques.
The equal weight given to all the essential elements of reading: decoding, comprehension and fluency in reading aloud.
The close tracking of individual progress so that no student is overlooked.
The integration of standard techniques for decoding and comprehension into all activities where the students confront print.

Why does the largest impact come in the first year? The effect is partly cognitive and partly emotional. Under intensive instruction, students rapidly repair simple sources of error, and under intensive practice they rapidly rise to fluency in areas where they have come with partial skill. Much of the first year is devoted to overcoming inertia, passivity and low expectations. Consequently, students approach the end-of-first-year tests not only with more skill, but also with more attention, resourcefulness and persistence. The result is a burst of increased performance. In subsequent years, they must settle down to undiluted, new and more gradual learning.

Why is progress inversely related to entering competency? Ben Bronz Academy is a remedial school, and reading is only one of many challenges that the students face. Two things may be happening: (1) students who initially do well in reading probably put their main effort elsewhere, and (2) curriculum development concentrates on helping extremely disabled students to develop basic skills, rather than expanding above-average competencies.

What about the issue of teaching to the tests? In the history of American education, replicable, outcome-based instruction has frequently run aground on this issue. Programs that produce impressive growth in test scores are often accused of teaching the specific answers to the test items and not generalizable skills. This would be particularly easy to do with the WRAT, which consists of a relatively small set of specific words to be recognized and pronounced. Ben Bronz staff members have been very careful not to do this, but in anticipation of the criticism, the school has been collecting simultaneous data from the following additional measures besides the WRAT and the Gates:

1. Speed and accuracy in reading aloud from grade-level texts
2. Multiple-choice Cloze MAZE tests
3. Quality and productivity in expository and creative writing

Analysis of these data to date gives reassurance that the gains measured by the Gates and the WRAT are indeed generalizable. Interviews with parents and students also show that they, too, find that these results to be robust.

Why are these evaluative data important? We have shown that the Ben Bronz Reading Program is a replicable curriculum. Parents, students and staff of Ben Bronz Academy now have objective evidence on which to base their expectations. On the basis of the data from 1991-92 through 1996-97 we may predict that students who enter with below average scores have a 90% chance of reaching or exceeding normal progress in learning to read during their first year of enrollment. The data from school year 1997-98 confirmed this prediction.

Following this rationale, we may compare the progress of each year's new enrollees with the progress of the earlier groups. We may congratulate ourselves on improved, or well-maintained, high-quality performance and we may take steps to find the reasons for decreased performance. Replicable curricula make this kind of long-term, sustained, educational quality control possible.

We believe that it is not the child's disability that makes him unable to read, but the interaction of that disability and an inappropriate teaching intervention. We are seeking effective interventions. The results of this study indicate that we have made a good start.

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MAZE TEST

Fuchs, L.S., Hamlett, C.L. and Fuchs, D. (1997) Monitoring Basic Skills Progress: Basic Reading. Austin, Texas: PRO/ED