Date of Award
2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Abraham S. Fischler College of Education
Advisor
Gabriela Mendez
Committee Member
Mel D. Coleman
Committee Member
Ronald P. Kern
Keywords
cost-effectiveness, early literacy intervention, elementary schools, first-grade students, Florida school district, free or reduced-price lunch, individualized instruction, reading, reading achievement, reading gain, reading intervention, reading proficiency, reading programs, Reading Recovery, school district evaluation, student performance, literacy development, program effectiveness, reading abilities, reading outcomes, southeast Florida schools, student achievement, targeted intervention, educational assessment
Abstract
The Reading Recovery (RR) program is an early literacy intervention that provides individualized daily instruction to 1st-grade students with the lowest reading abilities in their classrooms. The program aims to increase the students’ reading performance levels so that they perform at the same level as their peers. A school district in southeast Florida is currently experiencing school district-wide problems as a result of poor reading achievement among its students. The RR program was implemented at many elementary schools as an intense early intervention for reading. This applied dissertation evaluated the effectiveness of the implementation of the RR program in the selected school district.
The researcher analyzed data for 124 students in the program for the 2008-2009 school year in 12 schools in which the program was implemented. The purpose of this applied dissertation was to determine if the program was effective and if it increased the reading proficiency of the participants in the selected school district. The researcher analyzed data for the selected school district and determined that the RR program was an effective reading intervention during the 2008-2009 school year. The reading proficiency of the 1st-grade students who participated in the RR program did increase significantly. The reading proficiency of 1st-grade students receiving free or reduced-price lunch who participated in the program also increased significantly. The results of this applied dissertation showed that the RR program was a cost-effective reading intervention in the selected school district and it is comparable in cost to similar reading interventions utilized in the selected school district in southeast Florida.