Reading Program: Waterford Early Reading Program™

Reading Program Overview


Intervention: Waterford Early Reading Program™

Waterford Early Reading Program™ is a software-based curriculum for
students in Kindergarten through second grade. The curriculum is designed
to promote reading, writing, and typing, incorporating literacy skills such as
letter mastery, language stories, spelling, basic writing skills, reading and
listening development, and comprehension strategies. It can be used as a
supplement to the regular reading curriculum. Program materials include
classroom lessons and take-home materials in addition to the Waterford
software. Waterford Early Reading Program™ offers pretest placement
and posttest assessments, in addition to ongoing assessments throughout
the program.

Research

One study of Waterford Early Reading Program™ met the What Works
Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards with reservations. The single
study included more than 70 Kindergarten students from six schools in
Ohio. 2 The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Waterford Early
Reading Program™ to be small for alphabetics and for comprehension.
No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations
 addressed fluency or general reading achievement.

Effectiveness

Waterford Early Reading Program™ was found to have potentially positive
effects on alphabetics and no discernible effects on comprehension.


1 The descriptive information for this program was obtained from a publicly
available document on the program's website
(http://www.pearsondigital.com/pdfs/werp/researchsummary-werp.pdf,
downloaded April 2007). The WWC requests developers to review the
program description sections for accuracy from their perspective. Further
verification of the accuracy of the descriptive information for this program is
beyond the scope of this review.

2 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research.
Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.

3 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement
indices for all findings across the study.

Teachers, Parents and Administrators:
Please Give your Input on Waterford Early Reading Program™

WWC is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's

Institute of Education Sciences, the WWC:

Produces user-friendly practice guides for educators that address

instructional challenges with research-based recommendations for

schools and classrooms; Assesses the rigor of research evidence

on the effectiveness of interventions (programs, products, practices,

and policies), giving educators the tools to make informed decisions;

Develops and implements standards for reviewing and synthesizing

education research; and

Provides a public and easily accessible

registry of education evaluation researchers

to assist schools, school districts, and program

developers with designing and carrying out

rigorous evaluations.

All reports are reprinted from the

US Department of Education website

WWC for informational purposes.

Complete Reports Can Be Found

@ http://ies.ed.gov/