Reading Recovery Students Sustain Gains

The Reading Recovery initiative in Sarasota County Schools continues to show exceptional results in lifting first-grade students who struggle the most with reading and writing.

Now in its fourth year and expanded to every elementary school in the district, Reading Recovery has proven to help the most challenged first-grade readers quickly catch up to their classmates. What’s more, with several years of data now available to analyze, we’ve also learned that students are sustaining those gains as they move up to second and third grade!

Success Is in the Numbers

Reading Recovery is an intensive, short-term literacy intervention typically lasting from 12 to 20 weeks. Students enrolled in it work one-on-one for 30 minutes every day with a highly trained literacy teacher. Gulf Coast Community Foundation and donors Keith and Linda Monda introduced Reading Recovery to the Sarasota County School District in 2015. The initiative has been scaled district-wide thanks to the commitment of the district and the generosity of several other funding partners. 

Analysis of the 2017-18 school year showed that 84% of students who had been reading below grade level were able to reach grade-level standards by the end their Reading Recovery lessons. (The national average success rate for Reading Recovery is about 75 percent.) Last year, 178 first-graders in Sarasota County successfully completed Reading Recovery. 

Data from the past three years also show that students who completed this targeted intervention maintained their gains in later grades. According to an independent assessment, students who achieved grade-level standards in first grade did not drop farther behind their peers in second and third grades. In fact, the gap between Reading Recovery students and their classmates who didn’t require lessons continued to narrow slightly over the next two grades.

Another positive outcome to celebrate: It appears that Reading Recovery is influencing the number of students required to repeat first grade. Since Reading Recovery was introduced in 2015-16 at three schools in the district, the number of students “retained,” or held back, at those schools has been cut in half. While other activities at the school level may contribute to this achievement, the high success rate of Reading Recovery in Sarasota County suggests its impact on retention rates.

Stemming “Summer Slide”

Further contributing to improved student prospects and performance is supplemental instruction provided through our Kids READ summer reading program.

Gulf Coast initiated this program, which provides tutoring from trained Reading Recovery teachers to at-risk students over the summer, to reduce “summer slide.” A wonderful partnership between the district, local summer-camp providers, and Gulf Coast has ensured that Kids READ can target two groups of students:

► rising first-graders identified by their kindergarten teachers as likely to need Reading Recovery in the fall

► former Reading Recovery students who may need help to maintain or boost their reading level before second grade

Kids READ was offered this past June and July for seven weeks at seven sites across the county. An assessment of the summer program showed that 60 out of 62 students who participated in the full seven weeks of instruction showed no evidence of summer learning loss. Of that group, 11 rising first-graders who had been expected to require Reading Recovery lessons will not need to be enrolled because of their progress!

"Both Reading Recovery and Kids READ are demonstrating documented impact for kids in the lowest literacy cohort of our school system," said Veronica Brady, senior vice president for philanthropy at Gulf Coast. "We are so grateful for the partnership and generosity of all those who have invested in this initiative, which is giving kids a real lift early on their schooling."