Reading program ranked No. 1 by USDE
ESU Media Relations
Thursday, December 4, 2008
A reading program connected to Emporia State University was named by the US Department of Education as the best program assisting young students who are struggling with learning to read and write.
Suzanne DeWeese, a Reading Recovery teacher leader at ESU, received word on December 2 that Reading Recovery was ranked number one in general reading achievement by the USDE’s What Works Clearinghouse.
This is the second consecutive year Reading Recovery has been recognized as a “central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education,” according to the USDE WWC.
“The updated information in this latest report includes information on the collaboration between universities and school districts in providing training and professional development for teachers,” DeWeese said.
In 1998, ESU became a University’s Reading Recovery University Training Center. Reading Recovery is used in 58 Kansas school districts, including area school districts: Southern Lyon County, Lebo-Waverly, and Marais des Cygnes Valley.
Reading Recovery is a popular early literacy intervention for struggling first grade readers, was a target of criticism in recent years from the Bush administration. Beginning in 2007, the USDE’s inspector general found since implementation of the No Child Left Behind legislation’s Reading First program, educational advisors and federal reading officials sought to keep states from using money from the federal officials to pay for Reading Recovery despite its effectiveness and scientific research base.
Imported to the United States from New Zealand in 1984, Reading Recovery is an intensive, one-to-one tutoring program that targets the lowest-achieving first graders. It is used by more than 100,000 students a year in 7,500 schools across the country, according to the council.
The report can be found at ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/repports/beginning_reading/reading_recovery/.
emporia4life (anonymous) says...
This is a wonderful, research based program!!!! Too bad USD 253 dropped it a few years ago :(
December 4, 2008 at 4:53 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
create (anonymous) says...
Yet this program was a target of criticism by the Bush administration. Imagine that.
December 4, 2008 at 8:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
schooler (anonymous) says...
Emporia didn't dropped this program because it wasn't successful, but because we had to provide reading interventions to many more students than what reading recovery could do. One reading recovery teacher can only serve 8 kids per year and only at the first grade level. We usually had 2 RR teachers in a building, so we couldn't serve more than 16 first graders in one year. This district had many more students who needed reading assistance. I truly believe reading recovery was successful in this district, but we had to find a different solution to meet the needs of our student population. ESU was also a wonderful support when we had this program. Congrats to ESU and our former RR teachers, but I truly don't believe there is a reason to bash usd253 for making this decision.
December 12, 2008 at 9:16 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )