Compensatory reading instruction for struggling readers: the sooner, the better

Learning to read represents a major cognitive achievement for individuals and an amazing evolutionary step for humanity. However, some individuals show significant and persistent problems with reading, placing them at a disadvantage throughout life. This paper analyzes the results of a yearly intensive reading intervention program for 182 second-grade struggling readers. 

Reducing the gap between struggling readers and their classroom peers is a daunting but crucial societal challenge. Connie Juel (1988) has long shown that students who begin the 1st grade with reading difficulties do not reach, by the end of the 4th grade, even the decoding level of good readers starting the 2nd grade. Worse still, past evidence also shows that the gap between good and poor readers widens over time. Heckman (2006) (Nobel Prize in Economics in 2000) showed that the return on investment in education during early childhood is immeasurably higher than that achieved during adolescence or adulthood (“Heckman Curve.” See Figure). 

While Juel and Heckman’s findings show that early intervention is invaluable, other studies stress that (1) the structure of intervention programs, (2) the instructional delivery, and (3) the program intensity are also critical features for successful interventions.

Students in this study received a multi-component program, including repeated readings, word recognition, morphological analysis, text interpretation, and writing skills, in fifty 45-minute intervention sessions over the school year (three to five weekly). Overall, the results show that the large beginning between-group differences in accuracy and expressiveness become irrelevant by the end of the school year but are still large in reading speed. Still, the gap in reading speed was reduced by about 45%. Furthermore, the narrowing of differences between the groups progressively increased as the school year advanced, suggesting that extending the program could nearly eliminate the reading gaps. 

Click here to go to the paper by João Lopes, Pedro S. Martins, Célia Oliveira, João Ferreira, João Tiago Oliveira, and Nuno Crato.