Failure Free Reading shows no discernible effects on alphabetics outcomes for beginning readers¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2007 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? In a randomized controlled trial, Failure Free Reading did not have a statistically significant effect on any of four alphabetics outcomes, and the domain average effect size (0.04) was not substantively important. → What Works Clearinghouse 2007

Evidence¶

What Works Clearinghouse 2007¶

What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education. (2007). WWC Intervention Report: Failure Free Reading. https://www.failurefreeonline.com/index_parents.php

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Findings from the Torgesen et al. (2006) randomized controlled trial of 93 third-grade students in eight Pennsylvania school units, as summarized by the WWC across four alphabetics measures (WRMT-R Word Identification and Word Attack; TOWRE Phonetic Decoding Efficiency and Sight Word Efficiency). The WWC computed a domain average effect size of 0.04, "neither statistically significant nor large enough to be considered substantively important" (threshold 0.25), with an average improvement index of +1 percentile points (range -3 to +7).

"The authors reported that Failure Free Reading did not have a statistically significant effect on any of the four outcomes. The average effect size across the three outcomes was neither statistically significant nor large enough to be considered substantively important"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Decoding — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Failure Free Reading shows no discernible effects on reading fluency — related
• The Frechtling, Zhang, and Silverstein (2006) study showed a substantively important positive average alphabetics effect, while Hecht (2003) did not — related
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• CSR shows small positive effects on GMRT and TOSREC with an average effect size of +0.04 across three evaluations — related
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