Examining the Impacts of Early Reading Intervention on the Growth Rates in Basic Literacy Skills of At-Risk Urban Kindergarteners

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of the Scott Foresman Early Reading Intervention (ERI) on growth rates in the early literacy skills of urban at-risk kindergarten students. Students participated in one of three groups: treatment-intensive/ strategic, treatment-benchmark, and nontreatment-benchmark. Treatment group students received a 30-minute ERI program from classroom teachers 3 days a week for 5 to 14 weeks. Using multivariate analysis of variance and the hierarchical linear model, the authors compared students' benchmark and progress monitoring scores on the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF) subtests of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Literacy Skills™. Results indicated that PSF and NWF benchmark performance gaps decreased between the treatment-intensive/ strategic and nontreatment-benchmark groups, indicating beneficial effects for the ERI. Additionally, the PSF and NWF progress monitoring growth rates of treatment group students during the ERI program were significantly higher than rates before treatment. Implications of early reading interventions for urban at-risk students are discussed.