Reading First Impact Study

This report presents preliminary findings from the Reading First Impact Study, a congressionally mandated evaluation of the federal government initiative to help all children read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) established Reading First and mandated its evaluation. This document is the first of two reports: it examines the impact of Reading First funding in 2004-05 and 2005-06 in 18 sites across 12 states. The report examines program impacts on students' reading comprehension and teachers' use of scientifically based reading instruction. Key findings are that: (1) On average, estimated impacts on student reading comprehension test scores were not statistically significant; (2) On average, Reading First increased instructional time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension); (3) Average impacts on reading comprehension and classroom instruction did not change systematically over time as sites gained experience with Reading First; and (4) Study sites that received their Reading First grants later in the federal funding process experienced positive and statistically significant impacts both on the time first and second grade teachers spent on the five essential components of reading instruction and on first and second grade reading comprehension, in contrast to study sites that received their Reading First grants earlier in the federal funding process, where there were no statistically significant impacts on either time spent on the five components of reading instruction or on reading comprehension scores at any grade level. The final report is due in early 2009, and will provide an additional year of follow-up data, and will examine whether the magnitude of impacts on the use of scientifically based reading instruction is associated with improvements in reading comprehension. Eight appendixes are included: (1) State and Site Award Data; (2) Methods; (3) Measures; (4) Additional Exhibits for Main Impact Analyses; (5) Confidence Intervals for Main Impact Estimates; (6) Graphs of Site-By-Site Impact Estimates; (7) Additional Exhibits for Subgroup Analyses; and (8) Alternative Moderators of Reading First Impacts. (Contains 55 footnotes and 106 exhibits.) [This report was produced by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. For the Executive Summary of this report, see ED501219.].