An evaluation of Reading Recovery

THE AUTHORS evaluated the effectiveness of Reading Recovery (RR) in 10 primary schools in New South Wales. Children were randomly assigned to either RR or a control condition in which they received only the resource support typically provided to at-risk readers. Low-progress readers from five matched schools where RR was nor in operation were used as a comparison group. Results indicated that at short-term evaluation (15 weeks), the RR group were superior to control students on all tests measuring reading achievement but not on two out of three tests which measured metalinguistic skills. At medium-term evaluation (30 weeks) there were no longer any differences between the RR and control children on seven out of eight measures. Single-case analysis suggested that, 12 months after discontinuation, about 35% of RR students had benefited directly from the program, and about 35% had not been ''recovered.'' The remaining 30% would probably have improved without such an intensive intervention, since a similar percentage of control and comparison students had reached average reading levels by this stage.