by Dr. Billy Molasso

A story goes that someone once complained to Voltaire that life is hard, to which the French thinker replied, “Compared to what?”

The “compared to what” question comes to mind with Henry May’s new research on Reading Recovery suggesting that the tutoring program for first graders struggling with reading does not produce lasting gains and may even hold back students. Any intervention has limited rates of success, but by failing to compare RR to any other intervention aimed at young readers, the study is unable to conclude that the program is not working. As Voltaire might ask, if not Reading Recovery, then what?

Decades of results and mountains of research show that Reading Recovery has been working well for generations of students since it was imported from New Zealand more than 35 years ago. That’s why it is used in more than 2,000 school districts in North America.

Results matter. Our annual results publicly published every year demonstrate that Reading Recovery has a profound impact on most children in the intervention.  Take a look at last year’s IDEC summary report and see how Reading Recovery students actually did better during the COVID disruption than did the random sample of students who did not receive this intervention.

The May study further suggests that children who had Reading Recovery in first grade actually showed “negative” impacts by third grade. Journalist Emily Hanford, who has been on a phonics-for-all crusade for years, seized on the findings, explaining that third and fourth grade test scores of Reading Recovery students were worse than, “similar students who did not receive Reading Recovery.”

Stop right there!

The students in the control group were not “similar.” If they were, we would know their demographics – which we don’t – and they would have been identified as needing intervention—which they weren’t.

In other words, the control group kids were very likely doing better in first grade compared to the Reading Recovery kids. And many Reading Recovery students continued to struggle, no doubt, for the same reason they struggled in the first place, which the study did not even attempt to identify.

Beyond that, many of the Reading Recovery students in the study did not receive the full 12-20 weeks. Some may have had only a week or two. This is a bit like concluding that sports teams that skip the second half of a game tend to lose.

Moreover, we freely acknowledge that Reading Recovery has a success rate of about 75%. Some kids who need help in 1^st grade also need help in subsequent years. Did they get it? The study doesn’t say, but the answer is most likely no. While effective when done right, one-on-one tutoring is expensive.

We also question the study’s reliance exclusively on standardized test scores from multiple states. These tests vary widely in quality and scale, and they tend to measure vocabulary and comprehension, both of which depend partially on content knowledge.

If the study was confined to those who both completed the program, and were identified as not needing further interventions, we might have more confidence in it. Or if the study didn’t have a 75% attrition rate, we might have more confidence in it. As is, we take the study with a grain of salt, or maybe even a gallon jar.

May seemed to concede as much, telling Hanford, he “wouldn’t go so far as to say” that Reading Recovery was “harmful.” Hanford, however, glosses over May’s nuance, stating definitively in her headline that the intervention, “Had a negative impact on children.”  In doing so she discounts other recent, peer-reviewed research, such as Hurry, Fridkin and Holliman’s exploring the long-term effects of Reading Recovery on UK students at age 16. That study finds highly positive long-term outcomes, but you didn’t see it amplified by Hanford, because it doesn’t adhere to her well-crafted storyline.

The whole point of Reading Recovery is to do whatever it takes to help struggling students learn to read. All kids need phonics, but some may already have it while lacking content knowledge or vocabulary. The job of educators – and especially one-on-one interventionists—is to meet kids where they are – not where we wish them to be.

Studies like May’s raise more questions than answers. We welcome an open, honest dialogue about the best way to help struggling readers learn, but the May study is not a good place to start. Instead, we point to decades of positive results, which—when all is said and done—trumps research every time.

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Dr. Billy Molasso is the Executive Director of the Reading Recovery Council of North America.