Longitudinal Impacts of the Children's Literacy Initiative Professional Development, Coaching, and Model Classroom Intervention on Early Literacy Achievement
Author: Parkinson, Julia
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Literacy Education,Emergent Literacy,Intervention,Reading Achievement,Faculty Development,Program Effectiveness,Classroom Environment,Kindergarten,Grade 1,Grade 2,Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Comparative Analysis,Observation,Reading Skills,Effect Size,Elementary School Students

Student achievement in literacy has been a focal concern in the United States for many years. Improving teachers' knowledge and skill that leads to improved student achievement, particularly in the early grades, can place children on an improved trajectory that can have long-term impacts on life outcomes. Over the past decade, a large body of literature has emerged on teacher learning and professional development (PD), with relatively little literature based on rigorous research about the effectiveness of different methods for providing PD. With funding from an Investing in Innovation (i3) validation grant through the U.S. Department of Education, the Children's Literacy Initiative (CLI) engaged the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to conduct an independent impact evaluation. The i3 impact evaluation was designed to evaluate the effect of the CLI Model Classroom (MC) coaching and professional development program on teacher's classroom environment and literacy instruction, as well as the effect of the CLI program on student literacy achievement. The CLI program provides three years of professional development and coaching in literacy practices to all teachers in kindergarten through second grade, and provides additional resources and coaching to one teacher per grade, in an effort to develop that teacher into a model teacher for the rest of the teachers in the grade. This study addressed the following research questions: (1) What impact did the CLI Model Classroom treatment have on teacher classroom environment and literacy practices in early literacy?; and (2) What impact did the CLI Model Classroom treatment have on student achievement in early literacy? Results from the second year of the study are reported. This study was conducted in four large school districts located in the Midwest and Eastern United States. Seventy-eight schools were recruited within the four school districts. By the second year of the study, 3 schools had closed, leaving 38 treatment and 37 control schools. Teachers' classroom environment and literacy instructional practices were measured by the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO) Tool. Measures of student literacy achievement were gathered for kindergarten and first grade students over the first two years of the study. The basic strategy for the impact analysis was to estimate the difference in outcomes between the treatment and control groups, adjusting for the blocking used in random assignment and for teacher- and student-level covariates. During the first two years of the CLI i3 impact evaluation, the AIR study team found that CLI was, overall, implemented with fidelity. The study found significant positive results on the impact of the CLI program on teachers' language and literacy practices and on classroom environment, as measured by the ELLCO observation tool. The impact of CLI on cohort 2 kindergarten students' PAR Early Reading Skills total score was positive and significant, with an estimated standardized effect size of 0.18 (p = 0.003). No significant impact was found for CLI on cohort 1 first grade students' literacy achievement on either GRADE subscale. The final study year will provide additional results for first and second grade students to determine if three years of teacher participation in the CLI program leads to positive impacts on achievement grades. Tables are appended.