Does anyone know how to teach reading?

Federal study indicates supplemental reading programs don’t work

Education Week reports (subscription) that a second-year follow-up study released yesterday of some supplemental reading programs that are supposed to improve student comprehension - don’t.

Certainly, nationwide performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicates that reading has made scant improvement since the early 1990s.


The new federal study says only one of the three programs examined, ReadAbout, showed any positive impacts on reading comprehension, and those improvements were limited to the social studies area. Ed Week says, “ReadAbout showed no statistically significant effect, however, on tests measuring students’ comprehension of reading more generally, or of science texts.”

Of the first report, released last year, Ed Week said the federal research effort found “none of the four programs studied—Project CRISS, ReadAbout, Read for Real, and Reading for Knowledge—is effective.”

By the way, in the second year of the study, Reading for Knowledge was not even included because “more than half the schools assigned to use it for the study declined to continue.” That may be the most damning indication of all.

So, where does this leave us?

The NAEP, which does evaluate comprehension, indicates the programs, not the federal study, are faulty.

How can education exist in such an information vacuum of non-performance?

And, what does this tell us about all the educator claims we’ve heard for years about knowing how to teach kids?