Collaborative Strategic Reading Project
Principal Investigators
Janette Klingner, University of Colorado at Boulder
Funding Agency
U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences
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Overview
This project is designed to test the efficacy of a fully developed intervention, Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), with adolescent struggling readers. Over a 10-year period, CSR has been evaluated using quasi-experimental designs and has yielded positive outcomes for students with learning disabilities, students at risk for reading difficulties, average- and high-achieving students, and English language learners (ELLs). This project meets the need for randomized controlled trials to more rigorously assess the effectiveness of CSR with adolescent struggling readers.
Intervention
Teachers implement CSR with struggling adolescent readers.
Control Condition
Students in the control condition will be provided with school-designed, or “business as usual,” reading intervention, in order to determine whether the CSR curriculum is more effective than other interventions generally provided in middle schools.
Measures of Key Outcomes
Measures of key outcomes include: Woodcock Johnson III Passage Comprehension, Test of Word Reading Efficiency, Gates MacGinitie Reading Tests, and a Strategy Use Measure.
Primary Research Method
A multisite cluster randomized design is being used in this study. Students school-identified as experiencing reading difficulty were randomly assigned to classes, and classes were randomly assigned to treatment and comparison conditions. Teachers’ classes will be the units of assignment as well as analysis.
Data Analytic Strategy
A series of hierarchical linear models will be estimated to investigate the effect of treatment on vocabulary and comprehension. Average pretest scores (per class) and student-level pretest scores will be used as covariates to evaluate the moderating effect of pretreatment differences in reading ability on CSR’s efficacy.
Timeline
The project began in the fall of 2008 and is expected to continue for 4 years until the 2011—2012 school year.
Participants
In each participating middle school, approximately six teachers of reading intervention or English/language arts classes are participating in the study. Participating students have been school-identified as experiencing reading difficulty and were scheduled for a reading intervention class. From this pool, we will randomly select our sample of student participants.
Sites
Middle schools in Texas and Colorado
Outcomes
Research is ongoing.