At a glance
- Program: Read 180®
- Subjects: Literacy Curriculum, Intervention Curriculum
- Report Type: Efficacy Study
- Grade Level: High
- Region: Southwest
- Race/Ethnicity: Native American
- District Urbanicity: Rural
- District Size: Medium
- Implementation Model: 80+ Minutes
Native American READ 180 high school students demonstrated statistically significant improvements on the Reading Inventory.
Located within the Northeastern section of the Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico, the Central Consolidated School District (CCSD) piloted READ 180 during the fall of 2002 at Shiprock High School to increase student reading achievement among ninth- and tenth-grade students. One hundred percent of Shiprock’s 815 students are Native American and face unusual challenges. For example, 80% of students ride the bus for more than 100 miles to and from school each day.
During the 2002–2003 school year, 39 students (18 ninth graders and 21 tenth graders) participated in READ 180. Forty students (24 ninth graders, 14 tenth graders, one eleventh grader, and one twelfth grader) participated during the following 2003–2004 school year. In addition, longitudinal data for 2002–2003 READ 180 students who did not participate in READ 180 during the 2003–2004 school year are included in this analysis, as well as the data from a subset of six students who participated in READ 180 through both of these years, from fall 2002 to spring 2004.
In order to measure the impact of READ 180, Shiprock collected and examined data from the Reading Inventory® for two consecutive school years. Overall, Shiprock students enrolled in READ 180 evidenced statistically significant reading gains on the Reading Inventory.
From 2002–2003, 82% of READ 180 participants improved their Reading Inventory Lexile® (L) measures. On average, ninth- and tenth-grade students who participated in READ 180 gained 199L, from 688L at pretest to 887L at posttest. The statistically significant Lexile gain demonstrated by READ 180 students is more than quadruple the expected fall-to-spring growth for high school students (50L) (Table 1 and Graph 1).
GRAPH 1. Central Consolidated School District READ 180 Students, Grades 9–10 (N=28)
Performance on Reading Inventory, 2002 to 2003
Note. The change in average Reading Inventory scores was 199.0L. The gains in Lexile scale scores from the pretest to the posttest are statistically significant, and the effect size is 1.02, which is considered a large effect.
During the 2003–2004 school year, ninth- through twelfth-grade students who participated in READ 180 gained an average of 127L, from 796L at pretest to 923L at posttest. Similar to the previous year, the Lexile gain demonstrated by the READ 180 students exceeds the expected gain as determined by the normative sample (Graph 2).
GRAPH 2. Central Consolidated School District READ 180 Students, Grades 9–12 (N=32)
Performance on Reading Inventory, 2003 to 2004
Note. The change in average Reading Inventory scores was 126.8L. The gains in Lexile scale scores from the pretest to the posttest are statistically significant, and the effect size is 0.83, which is considered a large effect.