Page 33 - S44 Compendium

Disability • Economically Disadvantaged
Southern United States
Gain: 197L
232L
35L
31
RECOVERY SCHOOL DISTRICT, LA
STUDY PROFILE
Evaluation Period: 2009–2010
Grade: 4
Assessment: Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) Participants: N=29
Implementation: 90 minutes daily (Stand-Alone)
OVERVIEW
The Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans, Louisiana, enrolls nearly 25,000 students in Grades K–12 in both traditional and charter schools. Created by legislation passed in 2003, RSD is designed to take underperforming schools and transform them into successful places for children to learn. Since 2005, RSD has had the added challenge of addressing the needs of children who experienced the traumatic events
of Hurricane Katrina. RSD students are predominantly African American (98%). Thirteen percent are students with disabilities and 88% are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
In 2009, RSD piloted System 44 in one fourth-grade classroom at Reed Elementary School. Students were selected to participate based on a number of criteria, including performing poorly on the Integrated Louisiana Education Assessment Program (iLEAP) and/or Louisiana Education Assessment Program (LEAP), scoring below 200L on SRI, and exhibiting dif culty with word-reading skills on SPI. Most students demonstrated severe behavioral problems and were reading two to three years behind grade level. Reed Elementary School implemented System 44 as a stand-alone program for 90- minutes daily, ve days a week in one fourth-grade classroom. The classroom followed a rotational model, including a whole- group introduction in which the teacher led a short warm-up activity to engage students and build phonemic awareness and phonics skills, followed by two 20–25-minute rotations on the instructional software and in small-group instruction.
Fourth-grade students with severe behavioral problems enrolled in System 44 achieve signi cant Lexile gains.
RESULTS
Fall 2009 and spring 2010 SRI data were collected for 29 fourth- grade participants. Overall, ndings indicate that System 44 fourth-grade students demonstrated signi cant improvements
in reading comprehension on SRI. On average, students’ Lexile (L) scores improved from 35L at pretest to 232L at posttest,
a signi cant gain of 197L. The fourth-grade teacher reported observing a surge in student con dence and a decrease
in behavior problems as students developed the ability to successfully access grade-level texts.
GRAPH 1
Recovery School District System 44 Students, Grade 4 (N=29) Performance on SRI, 2009–2010
250 225 200 175 150 125 100
75 50 25
0
Fall 2009
Spring 2010
Note. The gain in Lexile score was statistically signi cant for students in fourth grade (t=6.20, p=.00).
SRI Lexile Score