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Power4Kids Celebrates Conclusion of Study's First Year Teachers Praised as Ambassadors of Reading Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 9, 2004 -- After a year of hard work and challenging lessons, the Power4Kids team of teachers, administrators, parents and children celebrated their many successes at helping struggling young readers learn to read and love books. ìAll of our teachers have risen to the ranks of ambassadors of reading and of Power4Kids ,î said Cinthia Haan, co-founder and chair of the Haan Foundation for Children. ìTheir impressive efforts have paid off as many of their students, who before this program stayed far away from books and reading, now beg their teachers for new books to read.î The year-end celebration was held at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, an education service agency created by the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1970 to assist local school districts to provide educational opportunities for school, families and communities. ìThe Power4Kids study signals a sea change in the way we conduct research to determine how best to instruct children in reading,î said Donna Durno, executive director of the Allegheny Intermediate Unit. ìWe are glad to be a part of this landmark study and thrilled with the many positive effects of Power4Kids on our students and teachers. Power4Kids is power for teachers, too.î
Power4Kids is a school-based reading project whose primary goal is to conduct ìgold-standardî research in the form of randomized controlled trials. The program was founded by the Haan Foundation for Children and generously supported by the Heinz Endowments, the R. K. Mellon Foundation and the Grable Foundation. The four foundations collaborated on all aspects of the study, greatly supporting the community needs and joining efforts with a wide range of research and educational partners. Power4Kids and its partners raised over $10 million to support this study and its broad implications for young students. The goal of Power4Kids is to close the reading gap in public schools. By analyzing and comparing four instructional reading programs (Corrective Reading, Failure Free Reading, Spell Read P.A.T. and Wilson Learning Program), Power4Kids will determine whether all students can achieve grade-level reading skills with intensive instruction. The study's second goal is to create ìwinningî school models that (1) are affordable for a school's budget, (2) can produce consistent, replicable results in student reading achievement, (3) are scalable to classrooms around the country, and (4) are systemically sustainable. Power4Kids study results will be released in January 2005. At the Power4Kids end-of-year meeting, teacher after teacher told tales of courage and victory among their students. ì To participate in this study was a wonderful experience. This was a year that I felt I made a difference in the lives of my students,î said Denise Morelli, an Allegheny Intermediate Unit and Power4Kids teacher. Diane Maxwell, another Allegheny Intermediate Unit and Power4Kids teacher, remarked on the progress made by one of her students. ìToday, after nearly one school year in the program, this child has drastically improved reading skills and can more confidently comprehend and communicate thoughts in writing. The child has soaring self-esteem, has made many new friends and absenteeism has dropped significantly. The child's entire personality and outlook have changed.î The event at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit marked the close of the first year of the Power4Kids study, which also includes the use of fMRIs to ìlookî into the brain of readers as they perform language tasks. The goal is to learn more about how the mind functions while performing learning tasks in order to best match instruction to certain learning profiles in the future. The Power4Kids study hopes to determine whether some programs more quickly and permanently improve learning functions and require less mental effort as children become better readers. ìThe future implications are enormous for helping all children who struggle in various subjects and areas of learning,î said Marcel Just, scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. This component also was conducted as a randomized controlled trial. At the year-end presentation, David Meyer from Mathematica Policy Research, who headed the impact evaluation and random assignment of Power4Kids , explained the rigorous nature of Power4Kids research. Meyers: ìThe Power4Kids study is a landmark in the field of educationóa large-scale, randomized, controlled, longitudinal field trial ñ most commonly associated with the research model used in the medical community.î It is the second largest study of its kind ever to be conducted in public schools. The study is designed to answer three key questions: • With effective reading remediation programs performed with students in public school, can training within small groups raise the bottom 30 percent of poor readers to an average reading ability with only 100 hours of intervention? Can these interventions "close the reading gap" for all critical reading skills, such as accuracy, comprehension and fluency? • Can we identify common learning profiles of struggling readers, and determine whether certain interventions work better and faster for specific profiles? 3) What are the costs and benefits for the schools, teachers and children when reading failure is corrected and special services are not required throughout the rest of a child's education? ìWe want to change education and make the Power4Kids model a serious part of all successful schools,î said Reid Lyon, chief child development and behavior branch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. ì Power4Kids is unique: It is the largest study of its kind, includes the most diverse population, has the longest follow through, the widest range of interventions and the broadest instruction and measures ever used,î he added. Another key partner of Power4Kids is the newly formed Institute for Education Sciences (IES). Dr. Russ Whitehurst, directors of the IES, has a mission to build a strong knowledge base for American educators. The IES stepped forward to become a major funding partner of Power4Kids, and subsequently has been ìa wonderful support for Pennsylvania's teachers and students,î remarked Haan.î
Foundation partners include the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation. ìIt took a village to accomplish this research,î added Haan. ìAnd, leading this village are the many teachers who diligently and expertly put in place reading intervention programs targeted to helping our most struggling readers learn how to read and enjoy good books. Our hope is that these Power4Kids teachers become reading ambassadors and spread the good word about what quality research says it takes to close the achievement gap in reading.î |