NIFDI's Office of Research and Evaluation has issued a review of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) report on Reading Mastery (RM) and Learning Disabled students. As you will see in the review, the office has concluded that there was serious misrepresentation of the articles included in the study. One actually showed that students studying with RM had significantly greater gains than students in national and state norming populations. Because the gains were equal to students in Horizons (another DI program), the WWC concluded that RM had no effect. The other study involved giving an extra 45 minutes of phonics related instruction to students studying RM. The WWC interpreted the better results of the students with the extra time as indicating potentially negative effects of RM.

The first part of the report gives details on these studies and the misinterpretations.

In addition, the review ignored the vast amount of literature that is available regarding the effectiveness of RM and other Direct Instruction programs with learning disabled and other special education students. The second two parts of the report include reviews of much of this other literature.

Feel free to share this report widely. You can contact the Office of Research and Evaluation at research@nifdi.org.

Read the full Response to WWC on Reading Mastery with LD Students HERE!