SCHOLASTIC LITERACY
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Survey respondents and focus group participants had an array of experiences with Scholastic Literacy in their classrooms, most of which were overwhelmingly positive. Regarding the usage of Scholastic Literacy, teacher respondents implemented certain aspects of the program routinely and with high fidelity. Namely, teachers incorporated Read-Alouds (and the Teacher’s Edition), student resource books, and Shared/Close Reading Texts several times per week, where they encouraged pre-, during-, and after-reading strategies in small groups and in whole class reading lessons. These activities would become central to most teachers’ weekly and even daily instructional practices. These resources and activities were identified as the greatest strengths of the program. Naturally, some of the components of Scholastic Literacy were not utilized as often or at all—e.g., Picture Cards, Writing Workshop Resource Books, Big Books, or Digital Family Guides—though this also may be attributed to the time constraints of teaching and is not necessarily a reflection on the quality of the materials. Similarly, some instructional activities were under-utilized, including opportunities to play with sounds such as rhyming and music to develop awareness of sounds in the English language. Teachers perceived Scholastic Literacy as being highly impactful on learner engagement and achievement. Responses on the survey and in focus groups provided evidence that the majority of teachers view Scholastic Literacy as a positive force in student engagement and in their achievement, specifically with the understanding of print concepts and reading comprehension. There was less of a perceived impact on phonics, word recognition, and writing. Focus group participants reinforced these findings, identifying the writing assessments as a shortcoming of the program. Attitudinally, teachers reacted favorably to Scholastic Literacy, particularly regarding the structure and routine that it creates in the classroom presenting learners with highly engaging and authentic texts. There are some areas of improvement, as noted earlier, which mostly centered around the accessibility to print texts, content alignment, and the design of more robust formative and summative writing assessments. Overall, teachers responded positively to Scholastic Literacy and its impact on learners. For teachers of all backgrounds and experience levels, the program provides an infrastructure for the reading classroom that becomes easier to implement each year. Conclusions The key results and conclusions of this evaluation are as follows: • Scholastic Literacy students slightly outgained comparison students identified by NWEA’s Similar Schools Report, by 0.55 points. This advantage approached, but did not reach, statistical significance ( p = .085). When school-level clustering was not considered in analyses, this advantage was statistically significant ( p = .001).
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