Across all tier groups, students who completed the recommended amount of Reading Plus instruction during the school year achieved significantly larger proficiency gains than students who did not engage in Reading Plus instruction.

These results show that students in all tier groups who engaged in the recommended amount of Reading Plus instruction over the course of the 2019-2020 school year significantly increased their capacity to comprehend increasingly complex texts, developed their capacity to understand higher levels of general academic vocabulary, and improved their reading efficiency. Students who completed more Reading Plus lessons achieved significantly larger gains than their peers who engaged in little or no Reading Plus practice. The results also show that students who were below grade level and engaged in more Reading Plus instruction increased their reading confidence and interest in reading. This in turn increases the likelihood that they will continue to use reading as a means to expand their knowledge, to be entertained, and to seek inspiration.

Study Design:

This report describes the progress achieved by Reading Plus students who were enrolled in grades 6 through 8 during the 2019-2020 school year. The focus is on students who completed the InSight silent reading assessment on at least two occasions, once near the start of the school year and again during the spring, so that growth over the school year was measured. Students were divided into three tier groups based on their performance on the initial assessment (refer to “Tier Groups”).

Students Excluded

Students for whom valid reading rates could not be calculated.

Analyses assumed 2.5 SeeReader lessons per hour.

Key Results:

Across all tier groups, middle school students who engaged in the recommended amount of Reading Plus instruction during the school year increased their reading proficiency levels to a significantly greater extent than did students who completed fewer or no lessons. Research has shown that students who increase their reading proficiency using Reading Plus also report increased levels of reading interest and confidence, a finding that was replicated in this study.

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Across all tier groups, students who completed the recommended amount of Reading Plus instruction during the school year achieved significantly larger proficiency gains than students who did not engage in Reading Plus instruction.

These results show that students in all tier groups who engaged in the recommended amount of Reading Plus instruction over the course of the 2018-2019 school year significantly increased their capacity to comprehend increasingly complex texts, developed their capacity to understand higher levels of general academic vocabulary, and improved their reading efficiency. Students who completed more Reading Plus lessons achieved significantly larger gains than their peers who engaged in little or no Reading Plus practice. The results also showed that students who engaged in more Reading Plus instruction developed more reading confidence and increased their interest in reading. This in turn increases the likelihood that they will continue to use reading as a means to expand their knowledge, to be entertained, and to seek inspiration.

Study Design:

This report describes the progress achieved by Reading Plus students who were enrolled in grades 6 through 8 during the 2018-2019 school year. The focus is on students who completed the Reading Plus InSight silent reading assessment on at least two occasions, once near the start of the school year and again during the spring, so that growth over the school year was measured. Students were divided into three tier groups based on their performance on the initial assessment.

Students Excluded

Students for whom valid reading rates could not be calculated.

Key Results:

Among students with below grade level reading proficiency, Reading Plus practice had a significantly positive effect on middle school students’ self-reported reading interest and reading confidence (self-efficacy). Previous research has shown that reading motivation and reading success are closely linked.

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This study focused on the impact of Reading Plus on student achievement as measured by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) English (ELA) assessment. Changes in the reading proficiency of students were measured in relation to the amount of Reading Plus reading practice the students engaged in during the course of the 2016-17 school year.

Study Design:

A quasi-experimental ex post facto methodology was used for this study. This design creates “treatment” and “comparison” groups ex post facto (after the fact) to approximate the random assignment of students that would occur in an experimental design study. Students who completed at least 80 Reading Plus lessons were matched with students who completed fewer than 20 Reading Plus lessons. Matching was based on student demographic characteristics and initial SBAC ELA performance to create “baseline equivalence” between the two groups. In this study, 408 students in grades 4-8 (94% economically disadvantaged) from a large suburban school district in Southern California were matched based on the described methodology.

Key Results:

Students who completed at least 80 Reading Plus lessons achieved nearly four times the SBAC ELA scale score gains in comparison to a group of demographically similar students who had minimal or no Reading Plus use (significant at p<.001). These scale score gains translated into larger percentages of Reading Plus students advancing to a higher SBAC ELA achievement level or maintaining their current achievement level.

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This study examined the impact of Reading Plus practice lessons on reading proficiency growth as measured by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) assessment. Also examined were relationships between scores and levels on the SBAC and InSight assessments.

Study Design:

This school district study included students in grades 4-8 with valid SBAC assessment data from 2015 and 2016 (n = 3,024). Of these students, 1,568 completed reading practice lessons in Reading Plus. An additional focus was the subset of these students who also had two valid InSight assessments during the 2015-16 school year (n = 1,075).

Key Results:

Students who engaged in more Reading Plus practice achieved significantly larger gains on both the SBAC and the InSight assessments.

There also was good alignment between SBAC and InSight. Students who completed at least 80 reading practice lessons in Reading Plus improved their InSight reading proficiency by 1.5 grade levels. Those who achieved higher grade levels on the InSight assessment also achieved higher proficiency levels on the SBAC.

Further, those who did not meet the SBAC grade standard in 2015, and completed at least 80 reading practice lessons in Reading Plus, were more likely to advance from not meeting to meeting the grade standard (Achievement Level 3) on the SBAC in 2016.

The post Reading Plus Impact on Reading Proficiency According to SBAC & InSight appeared first on Reading Plus.

This study focused on the impact of Reading Plus on student achievement as measured by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) English Language Arts (ELA) assessment. Changes in the reading proficiency of students were measured in relation to the amount of Reading Plus reading practice the students engaged in during the course of the 2015-16 school year.

Study Design:

A quasi-experimental ex post facto methodology was used for this study. This design creates “treatment” and “comparison” groups ex post facto (after the fact) to approximate the random assignment of students that would occur in an experimental design study. Students who completed at least 80 Reading Plus lessons were matched with students who completed fewer than 20 Reading Plus lessons. Matching was based on student demographic characteristics and initial SBAC ELA performance to create “baseline equivalence” between the two groups. In this study, 265 students in grades 5-8 from a large suburban school district in Southern California were matched based on the described methodology.

Key Results:

Students who completed at least 80 Reading Plus lessons achieved three times the SBAC ELA scale score gains in comparison to a group of demographically similar students who had minimal or no Reading Plus use (significant at p<.001). These scale score gains translated into more than twice as many Reading Plus students advancing to a higher SBAC ELA achievement level.

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This report describes a follow-up analysis of an earlier study examining changes in the reading proficiency of middle school students (sixth, seventh, and eighth grade) following a six-month course of web-based silent reading practice using the Reading Plus program. For this follow-up, the students were divided into four groups closely matched on pre-training reading ability, but with differing amounts of program use during the school year.

Study Design:

Middle school students attending one of two schools in the southeast U.S. were evaluated in both the fall and spring of the 2013-2014 school year using the nationally normed Group Reading Assessment Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE). During the 24 weeks between these two assessments, students were scheduled to complete four reading practice lessons per week.

Drawing from all participants in the study, individuals with four different levels of program usage (<40, 41-70, 71-100, and >100 SeeReader lessons) were closely matched on the basis of their pre-training GRADE Total Test Standard Scores, and secondarily by their Comprehension and then Vocabulary scores, yielding four matched groups of 51 students each (group size was limited by the smaller number of students with low program use).

Key Results:

While students in the four use groups started the school year at a comparable level of reading proficiency, and all groups improved their reading proficiency over the school year, significantly larger increases in GRADE Total Test Standard Scores (TTSS) and Normal Curve Equivalent (NCE1) scores were measured in students with more program use (use group effect: TTSS, p = .01; NCE, p = .03). Further, students who completed at least 100 reading practice lessons (~30 hours) achieved reading proficiency gains nearly four times as large as those measured in students who completed 40 or fewer lessons (~7 hours).

The encouraging gains achieved by the 100-plus lesson group are especially noteworthy because they were achieved with an investment of a relatively small amount of instructional time (~30 hours).

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This research measured changes in the reading proficiency of middle school students (sixth, seventh, and eighth grade) following a six-month course of web-based silent reading practice using the Reading Plus program.

Study Design:

Students attending one of two middle schools in the southeast U.S. were evaluated in both the fall and spring of the 2013-2014 school year using the nationally normed Group Reading Assessment Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE). During the 24 weeks between these two assessments, students were scheduled to complete four reading practice lessons per week.

Key Results:

Pre- and post-treatment GRADE scores were obtained from 437 students who completed reading practice lessons. Most of these students scored below the national average on the GRADE, with only 11% scoring above the 50th percentile. The actual amount of reading practice completed ranged from 1-20 lessons (n = 33) to more than 100 lessons (n = 117).

Pre- post-differences in GRADE Total Test scores differed significantly in relation to the amount of reading practice a student completed. Overall, increased program use was associated with larger Total Test score gains; students who completed 20 or fewer lessons over the school year increased their GRADE Total Test standard scores (TTSS) by 1.42 points (or 2.0 NCE1 points), while those who completed 100 or more lessons increased their TTSS by an average of 5.44 points (or 7.8 NCE points) (TTSS: p < .01, effect size = 0.34; NCE p < .05).

In broad terms, this study found that students who completed at least 100 reading practice lessons (~30 hours) were able to achieve reading proficiency gains on a nationally-normed third-party measure of reading proficiency that were nearly four times as large as those measured in students who completed 20 or fewer lessons (~5 hours).

1 Normal Curve Equivalents are commonly referred to as NCEs. Many state and federal agencies use them as a reporting method for specialized programs such as Title 1. NCEs are based on percentiles but have been statistically converted to an equal-interval scale of measurement. Therefore, NCEs can be arithmetically manipulated, meaning they can be averaged. This makes them particularly helpful for reporting data. The range of NCEs is from 1 (corresponding to a percentile rank of 1.0) to a score of 99 (or 99th percentile rank) with a mean of 50.

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