Average Growth
Students in SEEDS performed twice as well regardless of school or educational level of tutor/teacher
- The program had statistically significant and large effects across all five IGDI outcome measures of emergent literacy skills for 4- and 5-year-old students. As shown in Table 1. below, students’ letter sound fluency scores increased significantly from Fall to Spring, however by the end of the school year, PreK students in a Minnesota Reading Corps classroom were able to produce an average of 3.8 more letter sounds correctly in a one-minute period than PreK students in a comparison classroom. This represents a large effect size of about .71 standard deviations.
Table IV.1 Average growth among 4- and 5-year-old PreK students by Spring, page 29-30
- Furthermore, by the end of the school year, the Minnesota Reading Corps PreK students’ average score of 10.6 letter sounds was above the Spring benchmark of 10, whereas the comparison PreK students’ average score of 6.8 letter sounds was well below the benchmark.
Table IV.2 Average Growth Among 3-year-old PreK Students by Spring, page 46
Findings by Race/Ethnicity
The Minnesota Reading Corps PreK program was equally effective for PreK students regardless of gender, race/ethnicity or Dual Language Learner (DLL) status.
- Race/ethnicity was not a significant factor in explaining variations in all five of the student outcomes for 4- and 5-year-old students.
- Few differences were found in the patterns of effects when we subgrouped the sample into White and non-White and compared these findings to the subgroup analysis of moderator effects.
- Findings were statistically significant for both White and non-White students on four out of the five outcomes measured, it is also worth noting that larger average differences in growth were found between non-White students
- Program produced greater gains among non-White students relative to White students. Differences in outcomes were particularly evident in picture name fluency, a critically important measure of child vocabulary and a strong predictor of future reading comprehension proficiency.
- Non-White 4- and 5-year-old students achieved a larger amount of growth in letter name fluency (5.7 more letter names among non-White students compared to 3.2 more letters among White students) and picture name fluency (5.9 more picture names among non-White students compared to 3.6 more pictures among White students) compared to White students.
Table IV.1 Average growth among White and non-White 4- and 5-year-old PreK students by Spring, page 29-30
Findings by Major Demographic Group
Researchers added the identified moderators to the ANCOVA model and jointly tested the effects to determine if there were differential results across subgroups for 4- and 5-year-old students, implying that the Minnesota Reading Corps PreK program may be more or less beneficial for selected subgroups of students.
Findings include:
- Program is equally effective for both boys and girls, White and non-White students, and Dual Language Learners or English-speaking students
- DLL students benefited more so than non-DLL students on picture name fluency outcome.
Table IV.3 Moderator effects of subgroup variables on 4- and 5-year-old PreK students by Spring, page 41
Program was effective across multiple sites and site types; thus, the program is highly replicable in multiple preschool settings.
The Minnesota Reading Corps PreK program was consistently effective across the individual sites where the students received program services, regardless of the type of school setting in which the program was implemented. The lack of school-level effects on student outcomes validates the Minnesota Reading Corps’ approach to training, coaching and supervision.
The SEEDS program spread to other states with a significant foothold in Oakland and San Francisco through generous support from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the Battery Foundation.