Background | Reading Rescue

The Literacy Trust presents...Reading Rescue
A Literacy Intervention for Struggling Readers

Reading Rescue Program:
Background

Reading Rescue's beginnings

In 1993 the advisory council of Interlachen Elementary, a high-poverty elementary school in Putnam County, Florida, identified reading in the early grades as a critical need; the school was retaining about 25% of their first graders due to reading failure. Under the leadership of their principal, Lauren Sullivan, the staff researched early interventions and was impressed with Reading Recovery's reported results. Not enough funds were available for that program's implementation and in considering how they could best use their limited resources to prevent reading failure in first grade, Sullivan and his team decided that the solution had to involve the school's regular staff.

Interlachen invited Nora Lee Hoover, Ed.D., then a tenured Professor of Language and Literacy in the University of Florida's College of Education, to provide the professional development that would equip them to implement a tutoring program that would be an adaptation of Marie Clay's (1973) Reading Recovery. Hoover, who had been teaching graduate clinical reading courses and directing the College of Education's fall reading clinic for several years, was not Reading Recovery trained and had never seen a Recovery lesson. Although she had a long and successful record of working with public schools, Hoover felt that she was not the best person to assist the school. In addition, when Hoover learned what Sullivan had in mind, she had concerns about classroom achievement, educational equity, and the efficacy of the in-service program she was being asked to design and deliver.

Classroom teachers tutoring during the school day?

When Sullivan explained that each of Interlachen's first grade teachers had agreed to tutor a struggling reader for half an hour every day, with a paraprofessional monitoring the class, Hoover questioned the potential impact on overall achievement. If academic learning time were to decrease as a result of teachers' tutoring a single child for two and half-hours per week, the handful of students tutored may benefit but at what cost to the majority? Although at the time Sullivan called Hoover's concern a "researchable question," many years later he admitted to Hoover that he was convinced from the outset that, "It doesn't take a highly trained teacher to monitor handwriting practice in first grade." Sullivan was convinced that training teachers in how to work with their most difficult to teach students would result in higher levels of reading achievement for all - not just for those who were tutored. Subsequent years proved that his prediction was correct.

Hoover was painfully aware of how few teachers enter the profession with sufficient knowledge of literacy assessment and strategies for the prevention of reading failure. An in-service program that would provide essential information followed by immediate application during the regular school day might prove to be a powerful form of professional development. Hoover agreed that if the tutoring of individual children could bring about significant improvement in classroom instruction, and if monitors could oversee worthwhile or at least necessary classroom activities, then it was possible that Sullivan's proposed model might prove to be beneficial for all students - not just for the struggling readers who would be tutored.

Educational equity issues

Hoover estimated that the school might be able to serve about 14 first graders in their first year of program implementation given that the school had seven first grade teachers. But there would be many more than 14 at risk of failure. If the school could only tutor a portion of students who needed tutoring, Hoover questioned the educational equity of the proposed plan. But, the conviction was strong among Interlachen's staff that a start had to be made with the ultimate goal of fluent reading for every child. Sullivan expressed the opinion of many when he responded to Hoover's concern by saying that if they didn't tutor the 14 students they might be able to serve, "They too will be lost. We have to begin somewhere." To everyone's great joy, the equity issue was successfully resolved when, in Interlachen's second year of Reading Rescue's implementation, every child in the first and second grades who needed tutoring received it - 56 children in all.

Professional development issues

The final concern Hoover had related to the systemic problems schools face in providing professional development that improves instruction. While Hoover indicated her admiration for Interlachen's determination to follow what they took to be best practice, i.e. Clay's instructional recommendations, she cautioned that, given the limited number of in-service hours available, the program to prepare staff members to tutor might not be sufficient to develop the theoretical knowledge that undergirds effective teaching and which is generally regarded as a requirement for working effectively with struggling readers. The in-service program, Hoover stressed, would of necessity need to focus on training in assessment and instructional procedures. If it were true that tutors need a broad breadth and depth of theoretical understanding to accelerate low performing readers, then Hoover questioned whether the program would achieve its intended outcomes. To these reservations, Sullivan replied, "Just tell them what to do!" Like every good principal, he had the utmost confidence in his staff and his judgment was ultimately proven to be correct. Hoover understood that Reading Recovery was and is a service marked program; she and Sullivan agreed that Interlachen's program would be an adaptation of the instruction recommended by Clay in her books that were and are available to the public.

Principal's determination overcame consultant's reservations

Sullivan responded to Hoover's reservations by saying, "If you're a professor who doesn't want to work with public schools, kindly give us the name of one who will because we're determined to do this with you or without you." With that, Hoover knew the principal's strong commitment was very likely to assure the program's success in the school.
Hoover agreed with Sullivan that the results Reading Recovery was reporting seem to indicated that Clay's instructional recommendations were sound and to train teachers in some other, less researched or completely un-researched tutoring model would be contrary to educators' ethical responsibility to provide children with the most powerful form of instruction available. But, while Reading Recovery appeared to be achieving positive results with students successfully discontinued from that program, Interlachen was determined to tutor the very lowest performing students including those who may later qualify for special education services or who may be diagnosed as learning disabled. Hoover, therefore, indicated her intention to include the work of other researchers. The enhancement of Clay's instructional recommendations met with the school's approval. From the outset, the training Hoover provided reflected modifications in the Reading Recovery half-hour which are discussed below.

Hoover was also given permission to collect various type of qualitative and quantitative data that would be used to evaluate the program's impact.

Test results documented program's effectiveness

The on-going data collection that Hoover requested when she agreed to work with the school included observations of tutoring sessions and classroom instruction, as well as periodic surveys and interviews with school personnel. Hoover, assisted by graduate students, also conducted a year-end comprehensive evaluation of the program's effectiveness.

Sullivan decided that paraprofessionals would also be trained and with their participation 22 students were tutored that first year. In the spring of 1994, when a team of University of Florida graduate students, using the Eckwall Shanker Basic Reading Inventory (1992), tested a random sample of students who were tutored and a random sample who were equally low performing at the beginning of the year but who were not tutored (due to a lack of tutoring slots) results indicated that Reading Rescue students were reading on grade level, whereas most of the students who were not tutored were still virtual non-readers (Hoover, 1994). Results showed that on every measure tested: knowledge of sight vocabulary, ability to encode and decode words, oral reading ability, and reading comprehension, students who had participated in Reading Rescue performed at significantly higher levels than their peers who were equally low at the beginning of the year and who had not received tutoring (Hoover, 1994).

At the end of Interlachen's second year of implementation, a comparison with a control group was not possible because, as was previously mentioned, every low achieving student in the first and second grade who needed to be tutored was tutored. For the second year evaluation, a sample of Reading Rescue students was compared on the same measures with a sample of average readers. On each assessment, no significant differences were found between the Reading Rescue students and average performing students; both groups read at grade level. Interlachen's standardized test scores increased over the first two years of Rescue's adoption and continued to do so in subsequent years while the retention rate in first grade dropped considerably.

Over the past then years, Interlechan Elementary, now under the leadership of a different principal, has continued to tutor between 60 and 80 children a year. In the second year of Reading Rescue at Interlachen, 1994-1995, all the other elementary schools in Putnam County adopted the Success for All program. Even though Interlachen serves one of the lowest socioeconomic populations, and while the other schools have maintained their commitment to Success for All over the past ten years, Interlachen's standardized test scores have been consistently higher than those of the other Putnam County schools.

In the 2003-2004 school year, Interlachen's Reading Rescue program will celebrate its tenth anniversary. Their program has been self-sustaining with new additions to the staff trained in-house by the school's Reading Rescue Coordinator. The school's new principal attended a Reading Rescue Summer Institute to prepare herself to lead the program in which members of the school's regular staff continue to tutor, during the regular school day, between 60 and 80 students per year.