The Power4Kids evaluation covered four widely used reading programs for elementary students with reading problems: Corrective Reading, Failure Free Reading, Spell Read P.A.T., and Wilson Reading¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r? · q3
Currency · newest study 2006 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? The evaluation assessed the effectiveness of substantial parts or all of Corrective Reading, Failure Free Reading, Spell Read P.A.T., and Wilson Reading for elementary students with reading problems. → Joseph Torgesen 2006

Evidence¶

Joseph Torgesen 2006¶

Joseph Torgesen, David Myers, Allen Schirm, Elizabeth A. Stuart, Sonya Vartivarian, Wendy Mansfield, Fran Stancavage, Donna Durno, Rosanne Javorsky, Cinthia Haan. (2006). Closing the Reading Gap: First Year Findings from a Randomized Trial of Four Reading Interventions for Striving Readers. Washington, DC: Corporation for the Advancement of Policy Evaluation. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/closing-the-reading-gap-first-year-findings-from-a-randomized-trial-of-four-reading-interventions-for-striving-readers

q3 · i? · causal · r?

Descriptive statement from the report overview naming the four programs under study. The report says it is "assessing the effectiveness of either substantial parts or all of four widely used programs" for elementary students with reading problems. No comparative effectiveness results are printed in this summary.

"the evaluation is assessing the effectiveness of either substantial parts or all of four widely used programs for elementary school students with reading problems: Corrective Reading, Failure Free Reading, Spell Read P.A.T., and Wilson Reading."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The four Power4Kids interventions delivered about 100 hours of pull-out instruction in small groups of three students over one school year — related
• The Power4Kids first-year report presents impacts on reading achievement at the end of the intervention year, with nearly 800 children in the study — related
• The Power4Kids evaluation used two-level random assignment: 50 schools to four interventions and struggling readers within schools to treatment or control — related
• Word attack gains from the Wilson Reading System were concentrated among students with high initial word attack or vocabulary scores and students not eligible for free/reduced lunch — related
• Effects of Corrective Reading varied by student subgroup: positive for students with high pretest vocabulary scores and for students not eligible for free/reduced lunch, but not for their counterparts — related
• Failure Free Reading, the only word-level-plus-comprehension program, showed impacts for third graders but no impacts for fifth graders — related
• The interventions did not consistently benefit any baseline subgroup more than another — related
• Four remedial reading interventions combined improved phonemic decoding, word reading accuracy and fluency, and reading comprehension for third-grade struggling readers one year after the interventions ended, though not on all measures — related