Evaluating Targeted Reading Instruction: Learning from the Pilot

Literacy is essential to a student’s success in school and in life. However, over the past 20 years, schools across the country have struggled to find a way to improve early grade students’ reading performance. When the pandemic closed schools across the country, this problem was exacerbated to new levels.

Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI), developed at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), addresses the need for a research-based reading program in early elementary school. The professional development (PD) program, embedded with student reading strategies and webcam coaching for teachers, is designed to improve teachers’ small group reading instruction and help students reading below grade level improve their reading skills in first grade for academic success in later years.

A What Works Clearinghouse single study review confirmed the impact of TRI on early learners’ alphabetics and reading comprehension. But what about the impact on teachers? Can the effects on teachers and students sustain over time? Will the findings be generalizable to a larger context? Is TRI cost effective?  

To answer these questions, RTI International is partnering with UNC to conduct an effectiveness replication of TRI in North and South Carolina. The replication has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences and uses a randomized control trial to evaluate the implementation and short-term impact of TRI in the larger context and to further explore its cost-effectiveness and long-term impacts on students and teachers.

RTI researchers randomly assign participating first grade teachers to treatment and control conditions within schools across three cohorts. Three struggling readers in each treatment and control classroom will be recruited in grade 1 and followed to the end of grade 3. Treatment teachers receive training and coaching only during the implementation year. Control teachers remain in a business-as-usual setting, allowing for estimation of the added value of TRI over and above current instructional practices for students. All grade 1 teachers will be followed for 2 additional years to test TRI impacts during and after implementation.

To obtain a comprehensive picture of TRI implementation and impact, the study collects multiple data sources including parent surveys, student direct assessments, state proficiency test scores, teacher surveys, video-based observations of small group reading instruction, coaching observations, teacher focus groups, and principal interviews.

Now that we have finished the pilot year of the study, we have heard highly positive experiences from teachers who have benefited from TRI’s materials, coaching, and the opportunity to spend in-depth, one-on-one time with individual students. Many said they found the program effective with their students and easy to implement.

I've been teaching reading many years and the success that I've had with TRI has been astounding. I have had a child come to me who is developmentally delayed, and she has just blossomed and bloomed, and I feel like she's going to reach grade level proficiency and be a really strong second grader.”

I've personally really enjoyed it…I feel like for years, we've been told to do interventions, and we've had to pull from many different things to see what works for different kids and where they're missing. I feel like this is a curriculum that I can just go to…It's already built for me. I don't have to go try to find things, eliminate, and come up with things. .. it's been really easy to implement.”

A formal study is currently underway to further evaluate the program’s short-term and long-term effectiveness. Learning to read in early elementary school ensures continued academic success and has long-lasting impacts in adolescence and adulthood. The findings from the remaining two years of the study will provide a deeper understanding of the long-term impacts of targeted reading instruction and potentially help scale the program to benefit even more students across the United States. Through TRI, we hope that more teachers can improve their teaching, promote reading in their classrooms, and equip their students for future learning success.