External validity of a reading intervention for primary education as shown in Dominican sixth grade students performance on the National Diagnostic Evaluation

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore if there were differences between a group of Dominican sixth grade students that received project USAID-Read’s literacy intervention for two years and six months (n = 10,736) vs. the scores of students from a control group (n =11,135). Methods: This is a secondary data analysis from the sixth-grade national diagnostic evaluation from the Dominican Ministry of Education conducted in 2018 that assessed sixth-grade students' performance in language, math, science, and social studies. Results: The study found that students from project USAID-Read outperformed students from the control group in language and math. Students with the highest categorical scores in language and math were 13% and 56% more likely to belong to project USAID-Read, respectively. Discussion: This study shows the positive effects of a science-based reading intervention that consisted of teacher training, teacher mentoring, and providing students with systematic reading practice with reading materials created for this purpose.