blog posts and news stories

Report Released on Phase Two of The Efficacy of PCI’s Reading Program

The results are in for Phase Two of a five year longitudinal efficacy trial of PCI’s Reading Program for students with moderate to severe disabilities. This research builds upon an initial randomized control trial conducted last year that found that students in the PCI program had substantial success in learning sight words in comparison to students in the control group. Phase Two continues research in the Brevard and Miami–Dade County school districts with teachers of supported-level students in grades 3-8. Using both quasi-experimental and extra-experimental methods, findings again demonstrate that students who received PCI for two years achieved significantly higher scores on the sight word assessment than students who were not exposed to the program. However, student progress through the program was slower than initially expected by the developers. Empirical will continue to collect, integrate, and analyze outcomes for three more years.

The methodological designs for this study were presented at this year’s annual SREE conference in Washington, D.C. Results for this study will also be presented at the 2010 Annual AERA Meeting in Denver, CO. Meet the research team as they describe the study in further detail during the Division C poster session on May 3.

Report Released on The Efficacy of PCI’s Reading Program — Level One

Empirical Education and PCI Education have released the results of a one-year randomized control trial on the efficacy of PCI’s Reading Program — Level 1 for students with moderate to severe disabilities. Conducted in the Brevard and Miami-Dade County school districts, the study found that, after one year, students in the PCI program had substantial success in learning sight words in comparison to students in the control group — equivalent to a 21 percentile point difference. Though researchers found that students’ grade level had no effect on achievement with the program, they found a small moderating effect of the phonological pre-assessment: students starting with greater phonological skills benefit more from PCI than students starting with lower scores. This report will be presented at the 2009 AERA conference in San Diego, CA. A four-year follow-on study is being conducted with a larger group of students in Florida.