California Program Improved Students’ Reading at a Surprisingly Low Cost

A new study shows a program in California that costs about $1,000 per student is showing significant improvements in literacy.

The program is designed to improve early literacy among kindergarten through third-grade students in the state’s lowest-performing elementary schools.

The Early Literacy Support Block Grant program provides teachers with professional development grounded in the science of reading. The program allowed local school systems to decide how to spend the money instead of forcing them to follow a state plan.

One Central California school used the money to hire a curriculum coach and parent liaison. The literacy curriculum coach then trained staff on phonemic awareness while the Parent Engagement Specialist organized a Family Literacy Night.

A school in San Jose used the grant to hire a part-time literacy coach who met with teachers weekly to “support developing word recognition scope and sequence and instructional guidelines” and led professional development.

The school also purchased a new assessment and data system to monitor student progress.

A Sacramento school hired a literacy coach and two instructional aides. The school also spent money on purchasing new books for the school library with what was considered more culturally relevant material.

A research paper by two Stanford researchers said the results showed the program is cost-effective due to the improvements in reading it has brought in the first two years of implementation.

They said students saw about a quarter of a year improvement in achievement.

The study also said the program had smaller spillover benefits for third-grade math achievement and the learning return on the investment far exceeded that associated with the class-size reductions.

The state agreed to allocate $50 million in grants to the 75 lowest-performing elementary schools as part of a settlement to a lawsuit alleged the state violated the right to an education by sending students to schools that didn’t teach them to read.

The program is much cheaper than one to reduce class sizes that averages about $5,000 a student.

The authors noted that whether schools — and participating students — can sustain the gains is unknown, especially given the evidence that the benefits of reading interventions sometimes phase out over time.

It also said that teacher turnover at the targeted schools could also make it harder to sustain the improvements.