A study on the effects of a balanced literacy program featuring the Voyager Passport Intervention Program on third grade students in a rural school district located in middle Tennessee
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Voyager Passport Intervention Program when used as a scripted curriculum with identified at risk students and to determine whether the efficacy was affected by the students' gender, socio-economic level, or the type of school personnel providing the intervention program. A pretest-posttest, quasi-experimental design was used to determine gains in reading achievement of third graders over the course of this twelve week study. Three teams of third grade students, totaling 69 students from five elementary schools located in Cannon County, Tennessee, participated in the study. Students were identified at-risk by the DIBELS Benchmark Screening. A nonequivalent control-group design was used and featured the randomized assignment of the treatment to the experimental sites. Both groups received Tier I in the regular classroom and then participated in a Tier II intervention program. The treatment groups participated in a scripted intervention program while the control group participated in a teacher directed intervention program. This was the second year that Treatment Group A had used the Voyager Program and the first year for Treatment Group B. The Gates MacGinite Reading Test (4th ed.) (GMRT-4) was used as the pretest and posttest. A one-way ANOVA was used for analysis with question one. The two-way ANOVAs were used to test research questions two and three. Statistical analysis could not be completed for hypothesis four. Analyses did not find a statistically significant difference (p<.05) for the tested hypotheses. Findings indicated that a scripted intervention program did not prove more effective in increasing achievement scores of reading intervention students than a teacher directed program. Qualitative data was collected by surveying interventionists participating in the program and supported these findings. It is recommended that further research with a wider audience be conducted before administrators consider a scripted intervention program, such as Voyager Passport, as a Tier II curriculum.
Subject Area
Educational administration|Elementary education|Reading instruction
Recommended Citation
Regina Tarpley Merriman,
"A study on the effects of a balanced literacy program featuring the Voyager Passport Intervention Program on third grade students in a rural school district located in middle Tennessee"
(2008).
ETD Collection for Tennessee State University.
Paper AAI3320569.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI3320569