The Spanish- and English-Language Literacy Impacts of Descubriendo la Lectura across Three Experimental Replications

Abstract

We present findings across three randomized trials of Descubriendo la Lectura (DLL), an intervention designed to improve literacy skills of Spanish-speaking first graders struggling with reading. DLL is a one-to-one Spanish-language literacy program lasting 12–20 weeks offered to a school’s lowest performing emerging bilingual first graders. Directly replicating procedures across three cohorts, we examined Spanish and English literacy outcomes for approximately 400 students across 30 schools, 10 districts, and five states. Analyses revealed statistically significant effects of student-level assignment to DLL on all 11 Spanish-language outcomes, with an average impact of d = 0.57. Impacts across the four English-language outcomes were positive but not statistically significant. Descriptive results suggest that the Spanish-language impacts are reliably replicated, most likely due to the intervention’s strong implementation supports.

Keywords:

• Early literacy
• English learners
• high-intensity tutoring
• randomized controlled trial
• replication

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data. The data are openly accessible at https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/193586/version/V1/view.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc.

2 The WWC reviews of these studies are available at https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/study/89881 and https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Study/90683.

3 IdO is the Spanish version of RR’s Observation Survey (Clay, 2019), which tests six literacy tasks (letter identification, word test [i.e., reading vocabulary], concepts about print, writing vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and text reading) that, taken together, can measure emerging literacy abilities for early readers.

4 The Logramos is an evidence-based Spanish-language literacy assessment that parallels the English-language Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and is used to monitor growth and achievement in Spanish literacy skills.

5 See https://charts.intensiveintervention.org/screening/tool/?id=77c5c64492268897.

6 See https://www.pearsonassessments.com/store/usassessments/en/Store/Professional-Assessments/Academic-Learning/Brief/Aprenda%3A-La-Prueba-de-Logros-en-Espa%C3%B1ol-%7C-Tercera-edici%C3%B3n/p/100000585.html.

7 See https://riversideinsights.com/log_tercera.

8 Specifically, we rank ordered the statistically significant findings within the domain in ascending order of the p-values, such that p₁ ≤ p₂ ≤ p₃ ≤ p₄ ≤ p₅ ≤ p₆ ≤ p_M. For each p-value, p_1-M, we computed: p_i = α_i/M, where i is the rank for p_i, with i = 1, 2, . . . M; M is the total number of findings within the domain; and α is the target level of statistical significance.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through [Grant #R305A160060] to the American Institutes for Research. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.