Report 4.1: Progress in Reading First in a Michigan School District: A Study of Lansing Elementary Schools by Joanne F. Carlisle, Stephen G. Schilling, Ji Zeng, Kai Schnabel Cortina, Yevgeniya Kleyman

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the Reading First program in Michigan, using one large district as a case study. Reading First (Part B of Title 1 of the No Child Left Behind Law of 2001) provides funding to support improvement of reading instruction (kindergarten through grade 3) in school districts with high levels of poverty and underachievement. Specifically, we compared the improvement in reading of schools with Reading First (RF) and without Reading First (Non-RF) programs in Lansing School District. While schools are the unit of analysis, we follow only those students that entered these schools in first grade in 2003 and remained in the school through third grade. Analysis of socio-demographics showed that compared to the Non-RF schools, RF schools had higher levels of poverty and differed in ethnic composition. After controlling for differences in school composition and socio-demographic variables, we found that, compared to Non-RF schools, the Reading First schools made greater gains in Word Analysis between grades 1 and 2, in Vocabulary between grades 2 and 3, and in Reading Comprehension between grades 1 and 3. Because even before RF was brought into Lansing school district, this school district was implementing measures to improve early literacy, it is particularly noteworthy that students in RF schools have outstripped students in Non-RF schools in the gains they have made in reading achievement between 2002 and 2005.