The Impact of Two Professional Development Interventions on Early Reading Instruction and Achievement. NCEE 2008-4030

To help states and districts make informed decisions about the professional development (PD) they implement to improve reading instruction, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned the Early Reading PD Interventions Study to examine the impact of two research-based PD interventions for reading instruction: (1) a content-focused teacher institute series that began in the summer and continued through much of the school year (treatment A) and (2) the same institute series plus in-school coaching (treatment B). The Early Reading PD Interventions Study used an experimental design to test the effectiveness of the two PD interventions in improving the knowledge and practice of teachers and the reading achievement of their students in high-poverty schools. It focused specifically on second grade reading because (1) this is the earliest grade in which enough districts collect the standardized reading assessment data needed for the study; and (2) later grades involve supplementary instruction, which was outside the scope of the study. The study was implemented in 90 schools in six districts (a total of 270 teachers), with equal numbers of schools randomly assigned in each district to treatment A, treatment B, or the control group, which participated only in the usual PD offered by the district. This design allowed the study team to determine the impact of each of the two PD interventions by comparing each treatment group's outcomes with those of the control group, and also to determine the impact of the coaching above and beyond the institute series by comparing treatment group B with treatment group A This report describes the implementation of the PD interventions tested, examines their impacts at the end of the year the PD was delivered, and investigates the possible lagged effect of the interventions, based on outcomes data collected the year after the PD interventions concluded. The study produced the following results: (1) Although there were positive impacts on teacher's knowledge of scientifically based reading instruction and on one of the three instructional practices promoted by the study PD, neither PD intervention resulted in significantly higher student test scores at the end of the one-year treatment; (2) Added effect of the coaching intervention on teacher practices in the implementation year was not statistically significant; and (3) There were no statistically significant impacts on measured teacher or student outcomes in the year following the treatment. Twelve appendixes are included: (1) Theory of Action and Development for the PD Interventions for the Early Reading PD Interventions Study; (2) Details on the Study Design and Implementation; (3) Details on Teacher Data and Teacher Sample Characteristics; (4) Reading Content and Practices Survey Design and Scales; (5) Classroom Observer Training and Inter-Rater Reliability; (6) Classroom Observation Scales and Descriptive Statistics; (7) Details on Student Data, Sample Characteristics and Achievement Measures; (8) Validation of the Survey Data on Professional Development Participation; (9) Estimation Methods and Hypothesis Testing; (10) Fall 2005 Short-Term Teacher Practice Outcomes; (11) Supporting Tables and Figures for Impact Analyses; and (12) Supplementary Analyses. (Contains 165 footnotes, 35 figures, and 85 tables.)