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Remediation
Helping children get "Up to Speed"
Resilience
Helping children "Bounce Back"
Relationships
Helping children build "Strong
Bonds"
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
THE ISSUE~ACADEMIC FAILURE IN AMERICA
The social, emotional, and public health consequences
of academic failure are too devastating for us to ignore, yet educators need
proven-effective tools to help them meet the needs of their struggling students.
According
to the National Reading Council at least 10 million American children suffer
from reading difficulties, putting them at risk for academic failure and
serious disadvantages throughout life. In the midst of this national literacy
crisis, many educators are looking to afterschool to provide vital support – especially
in districts challenged by widespread poverty, trauma, and substance abuse. Yet,
so far, afterschool has not shown strong results in strengthening students’ academic
performance or in reducing mental health and behavioral risks.
For afterschool to help schools close the “achievement gap” teachers
need access to research-based tools and ongoing professional support. And because
children who struggle with reading often suffer from emotional and behavioral
problems, schools and afterschool programs desperately need the sustained involvement
of mental health professionals.
“The New 3 R’s” draws together proven best practices from the
reading intervention and mental health risk-prevention fields in a powerful research
design that aims to make afterschool a setting for real and systematic support
for struggling students. By pairing a highly effective, research-based reading
intervention with an in-depth social and emotional support program, “The
New 3 R’s” will give our most at-risk students the practical skills
and support they need in order to overcome difficulties and move forward in
school and in life.
“The New 3 R’s” is designed to provide educators with a potent,
flexible, low-cost way to meet the needs of the over 10 million young people
seriously at risk for failure in America’s schools.
THE RESEARCH
As
with all Haan studies, “The New 3 R’s” is
conducted with the “gold standard” of scientific research–large
scale, randomized controlled trial. “The New 3 R’s” is a
systematic two-year research study devoted to testing the efficacy of a highly
effective reading intervention in afterschools, both standing alone and combined
with an innovative risk prevention program:
• RAVE-O (an acronym for “Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary, Engagement
with Language, and Orthography”) is a multidimensional way of treating
reading obstacles that goes beyond the usual phoneme awareness and word-level
decoding approach to help children develop vocabulary, fluency, and a deeper
engagement with language.
• RALLY for Kids (”Responsive Advocacy for Life and Learning in Youth”)
is a comprehensive, focused risk prevention program to diagnose and treat developing
mental health and behavioral problems that occur in young people before those
problems reach a crisis point.
This study will determine the value of offering research-based reading support
and flexible, targeted risk prevention and socio-emotional support to the same
group of struggling readers. Because mental health issues – including low
self-esteem, depression, and social conflict– often go along with reading
difficulty, we believe that the addition of RALLY for Kids will enhance and strengthen
the RAVE-O reading intervention. If the results demonstrate the superiority of
such a combined approach, educators will possess a powerful new tool for helping
students at risk for academic failure. Best of all, the model can be scaled and
recreated in any learning context – including afterschool, public and private
schools and summer schools – where young people struggle academically.
THE OBJECTIVE
The
objective of “The New 3 R’s” is
to prove that it is possible to deliver vital reading, risk-prevention and
relationship-building support in a systematic way through afterschool. The
study will also seek to determine the social and academic characteristics predicting
which students will benefit most from such combined support. We suspect that
the students who benefit most will be those who not only struggle with academic
work, but also need help to avoid risk-taking behavior and to develop a stronger
sense of competency and self-worth – in other words, that group of students
most in danger of academic failure and its possibly devastating results in
life. And we hope to prove the value of afterschool as a setting for the training
of teachers in the use of research-based reading intervention and risk-prevention
tools, as well as ongoing professional support and observation to maintain
the fidelity of those tools in their translation to the classroom.
One result will be to make afterschool a valuable working partner to the schools
in addressing the needs of those students most at risk for failure. Another,
more pervasive “system-wide” result of this study will be to bridge
school and afterschool time, enhancing students’ academic performance by
developing their resilience and attachment to learning. Though afterschool programs
are the current platform for research and development, “The New 3 R’s” design
will be replicable in any learning context, helping educators to close the reading
gap and to meet the needs of the nation’s at-risk children.
THE RELEVANCE
Reading
skill is not only the foundation of academic performance, but is also a major
predictor of professional success
for adults. Yet, nearly 40 percent of fourth graders cannot read and comprehend
a short paragraph from a children’s book – in some urban school
districts, that percentage is closer to 70 percent. About 75 percent of students
who drop out of high school, and half of the young people with criminal records
and/or substance abuse problems, also have a history of reading difficulty.
Only 2 percent of students receiving special or compensatory education for
reading problems will complete a four-year college program. The National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development terms these numbers “extraordinary
and unacceptable” and regards them as evidence of a public health crisis.
“The New 3 R’s” offers a powerful, low-cost, evidence-based
way of supporting the academic performance of struggling students and their development
into healthy, successful adults. Unlike programs designed to sharpen one or two
particular areas of academic skill or to conduct isolated mentoring and tutoring
experiments, “The New 3 R’s” supports the whole student in
the learning environment. The goal is to simultaneously strengthen students’ educational
performance and enhance their opportunities in future life by giving them the
vital academic and mental health supports they need in order to move forward.
THE RESEARCH COMPONENTS
“The New 3 R’s” randomized
study includes 6 public schools and 270 children, in 4 school districts in
metropolitan Boston and Phoenix. There are four major components in the study:
• Training and Professional Development of teachers and practitioners
• Intervention to support both reading and relationship-building skills
• Analysis & evaluation to track the
impact of the program and to assess the usefulness of intervention tools
• Cost Effectiveness, Cost Benefit, and Cost Implementation Analysis
The total cost of Phase I of this program is $2 million.
THE FUNDING
The intervention is partially funded through the Interagency Education Research
Initiative (a collaborative effort sponsored by the Institute of Education
Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation,
and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development), The Virginia
G. Piper Charitable Trust, and The Haan Foundation for Children. THE LEADERSHIP TEAM
Principal Investigators
Dr. Gil Noam
McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Dr. Maryanne Wolf
Tufts University Center for Language and Literacy Research
Dr. Tami Katzir
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Dr. Robin Morris
Georgia State University
Advisors and Funders
Dr. Anne P. Sweet
Federal Project Officer/Senior Researcher
Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education
Ms. Cinthia (Cindy) Haan
Chairman, The Haan Foundation for Children
Ms. Marilee Dal Pra
Program Officer, The Piper Trust
Dr. Wayne Parker
Research Director, The Piper Trust
Principal Investigator for the Cost Analysis component of the Study
Project
Management
Mr. Robert McCouch
Research Director, McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Ms. Sally Wilson
Project Director, McLean Hospital and Harvard Graduate School of
Education
THE CHALLENGES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
“The New 3 R’s” has
set itself the challenging goal of contributing to school reform and
helping to close the reading gap by creating a working model of afterschool.
Nearly at the mid-point of our study, we have already passed a number
of important time-sensitive milestones. Below are the chronologically-organized
highlights of our work to date:
-In October 2003, the leadership team identified key criteria for participating
schools and approached principals (in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona,
and metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts), to introduce them to “The
New 3 R’s”. Requirements for schools included the existence
of a large, well-run, already established afterschool program that ran
at least three days a week for at least 2.5 hours a day, the identified
need for a reading program, and the willingness for the school to provide
space and resources to the project. The four schools participating in
year one of the study are Galveston Elementary in Chandler, Arizona,
Moon Mountain Elementary in Phoenix, Arizona, Beebe School in Malden,
Massachusetts, and Forestdale School in Malden, Massachusetts. [Add stats
on schools about number of kids, % free or reduced lunch, both Arizona
schools have 21st century grants, etc.]
– In November-December 2003, the principals
and leadership team identified, interviewed and hired teachers to deliver
the reading program (RAVE-O)
and teachers and social workers to deliver the socio-emotional support
program (Rally for Kids). The RAVE-O teachers included those who were
nominated by their principals and those already teaching RAVE-O in
other schools. The Rally For Kids practitioners included teachers nominated
by their principals and others from the community with experience working
with high-risk children.
– In December 2003, the leadership team trained 9 RAVE-O teachers in
Arizona and hired 5 already-trained RAVE-O teachers in Massachusetts.
Teachers
received a half-day training on the theoretical basis of RAVE-O and
a full-day training on the curriculum itself. In addition, RAVE-O staff
provided on-going professional development through site visits and
e-mail
correspondence. The teachers also received instruction in SRA Reading
Mastery (phonological instruction).
– In January 2004, the leadership team trained 6 Rally For Kids practitioners
in Arizona and 2 Rally For Kids practitioners in Massachusetts. The
1 1/2 day training focused on developing positive and consistent relationships
with children, fostering and sustaining collaborative relationships
with
teachers, families, and parents, making appropriate referrals for mental
health and community services, and identifying strengths and working
on challenges for individual children. In addition, RALLY For Kids
staff received ongoing professional development through regular conference
calls and weekly clinical supervision.
– In December 2003-January 2004, the management team obtained informed
consent, screened children, and invited eligible kids to take part
in the intervention. Children scoring 3/4 of a standard deviation below
the mean on standardized reading measures (i.e., sight word reading
and
phonemic decoding subtests of the Test of Word Reading Efficiency),
and those scoring one elevation greater than T>60 on any one of
the four dimensions of the Conner’s Reading Scale Revised Teacher
Short Version were considered eligible for the study. These four dimensions
include Oppositional, Cognitive Problems/Inattention, ADHD, and Hyperactive.
Study participants met the following exclusionary criteria: 1) none
had repeated a grade; 2) they showed proficiency in spoken English;
and 3)
they were free from severe hearing and visual impairments and severe
neurological conditions. Eight-five children in Arizona and thirty-five
children in Massachusetts met the eligibility requirements and agreed
to participate in the intervention.
– In January 2004, we conducted pre-testing
and started the intervention. Pre-test measures included measures related
to reading and language development,
phonological processing, orthographic processing, vocabulary knowledge,
speed of lexical retrieval, word-level fluency, oral reading fluency
(connected text) and oral and silent reading comprehension. Students
were also assessed for socioemotional profile, self perception, and
the reading self-concept scale. Direct observational measures, to provide
a richer behavioral dimension to outcomes of interest, we also performed.
– In
April 2004, we conducted mid-point testing, after approximately 24
sessions. Mid-point testing
consisted of the TOWRE.
We also videotaped each instructor once for fidelity.
-In May-June 2004, we completed the intervention and conducted post-testing.
Post-test measures replicated all pre-test measures.
– By the end of the pilot study year, we had completed all planned sessions
and experienced low attrition, even in the non-intervention control group.
–During August-September 2004, we will analyze
the findings from the first year of the study.
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"Poverty has many roots, but the tap
root is ignorance."
~Lyndon B. Johnson
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"..I think accountability is a good example
of something we need to be better at. And, that is why the President,
in his No Child Left Behind Act,has accountability right up at forefront...
"Accountability, stop making excuses for students who are
having difficult situations at home or speak different languages, but take
responsibility for students and teach our students to READ." ~Rod Paige U.S. Secretary of EducationNovember 10, 2003CNNLou Dobbs Tonight |
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Sponsored
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"We believe
education is a national priority and a local responsibility; that
Washington should be giving our schools help, not giving them orders."
President George
W. Bush |
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