This month, Ohio joined a growing list of states and school systems that require schools to use high-quality instructional materials aligned to the science of reading, an approach to reading instruction that emphasizes phonics for building foundational literacy skills and knowledge-rich curricula to support vocabulary and comprehension. The Buckeye state also explicitly prohibited three-cueing—a discredited instructional method, also barred elsewhere, that wrongly encourages children to guess at words rather than sounding them out.
With the legislation on the books, Ohio will now turn to implementation. If done well, the state will become a model for how leaders across the country can rigorously implement a science of reading law. One key step for Ohio—and other locales looking to strengthen literacy—is creating a catalog of approved curricula that only includes the good stuff.
In the area of core reading instruction, a number of excellent options should sail through Ohio’s approval process (e.g., Core Knowledge, Wit and Wisdom, and EL Education). And one hopes that flawed curricula such as Fountas & Pinnell’s Classroom and Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study are kept off the list.
Yet it’s not just core curricula that require vetting. Policymakers also need to examine the intervention programs that schools use to support struggling readers. In this realm, one of the most popular—but controversial—models is Reading Recovery. The program provides low-achieving first graders with twelve to twenty weeks of daily, supplemental, one-on-one instruction with a trained teacher. It’s based on the theories of New Zealand’s Marie Clay—an early proponent of three-cueing—and was introduced in the U.S. by Ohio State University professors in the 1980s. The university continues to be affiliated with Reading Recovery, and a group that promotes it is based in the Columbus area.
Right off the bat, Reading Recovery shouldn’t pass muster under Ohio’s new literacy law because it incorporates three-cueing. But its advocates may still pressure state officials to approve it by citing research that has been done on the program. If that is the case, it’ll be critical for policymakers to have a solid—and up-to-date—understanding of what the studies show. Spoiler alert: It’s not as rosy as its supporters often claim. In fact, according to the most recent analysis, the program actually does more harm than good over the long haul.
The vast majority of the research on Reading Recovery sheds no light on program effectiveness. Some analyses lack comparison groups, so we don’t know whether Reading Recovery is any better than other interventions. Others are simply case studies or surveys. A 2013 review by the What Works Clearinghouse found just three out of 202 studies on Reading Recovery met its standards for high-quality evidence. That review did report somewhat positive effects, but the three small-scale studies included just 105 total participants. None of the studies tracked long-term impacts. They only evaluated results immediately after the intervention.
Since that time, two larger-scale studies have been undertaken. In a report published in 2018, researchers analyzed program effects on approximately 3,400 Reading Recovery participants in about 1,000 U.S. schools. The results were largely positive and heralded by proponents. But like the earlier research, this study did not track longer-term outcomes; it only assessed results right after the intervention.[1] The results may have also been stacked in favor of Reading Recovery: 39 percent of the comparison group received no extra reading help whatsoever, while the rest received “some form of supplemental literacy support” (the research did not evaluate the program vis-à-vis another specific intervention).
That brings us to the most recent study on Reading Recovery. Led by the University of Delaware’s Henry May, co-author of the analysis discussed just above, a 2023 study finally provides much-needed evidence on long-term impacts. This large-scale research tracks through fourth grade roughly 5,500 U.S. students who participated in the program as first graders.
Results are grim. While Reading Recovery is again shown to provide a short-term boost, the gains quickly evaporate—and actually turn negative by third and fourth grade. The adverse effects are substantial, equivalent to falling behind one-half to a full grade level, compared to peers who did not participate in Reading Recovery. A lack of follow-up intervention isn’t the culprit for the freefall, as the analysts find that participants were somewhat more likely to receive extra support in subsequent grades than the comparison group.
Why the negative long-term impacts? The study authors theorize that Reading Recovery’s poor alignment to the reading science adds to students’ struggles in later grades.
The practices and strategies within Reading Recovery may produce large impacts on early literacy measures (i.e., reading first-grade books), but those practices and strategies do not translate to skills needed for continued success in later grades.
More specifically, Reading Recovery does not include isolated, systematic phonics instruction that is advocated by some literacy experts. As such, the program lacks a scope and sequence of sound-spelling patterns to be decoded, encoded, and read aloud in books.... It is plausible that students who participate in Reading Recovery may not develop sufficient decoding and orthographic mapping skills that lead to success with larger words in second and third grade texts.
In other words, Reading Recovery is more like a quick fix than a permanent foundation for reading fluency over time. It might even give some parents and students a sense of false hope. One Michigan teacher said it this way: “[Reading Recovery] actually reinforces strategies that struggling readers use. It’s actually harmful to kids. They end up doing worse. They might do OK for first grade but end up hitting the wall in third grade.”
Literacy scholars have been raising alarms about Reading Recovery for decades. In 2002, a group of thirty-two reading experts wrote to Congress, urging it not to approve funding for the program. Louisa Moats, a well-regarded expert, has said, “The whole approach is based on ideas that have not held up to scientific scrutiny.” Others have questioned the astronomical costs of Reading Recovery. In a recent Fordham publication, the National Council on Teacher Quality recommended that Ohio “discontinue the use of Reading Recovery,” and encouraged the use of other interventions such as SIPPS. Recent media reports indicate that districts around the country, including Columbus City Schools, are dropping the program.
The research is clear: Explicit, systematic instruction in phonics is essential to building children’s foundational reading skills. But such instruction is missing in Reading Recovery, and the latest research reveals its long-term consequences. It’s long past time for Ohio—and every other state in the Union—to abandon Reading Recovery and work to implement interventions that follow the science of reading.
[1] The control group in the study participated in Reading Recovery later in the school year, so the analysts were unable to assess long-term impacts.
