Congressman Ray LaHood, Representative Dan Brady and Illinois State University President Al Bowman observed a professional development session at the College of Education Reading Recovery Teacher Training Site Monday.
The site, one of 20 in Illinois and established in 1990, is dedicated to early intervention for first-grade students who have difficulty learning to read and write. The Reading Recovery program collaborates with 30-40 school districts throughout Central Illinois to implement Reading Recovery, impacting around 600 children annually. The site is responsible for training teachers, providing professional development and conducting awareness sessions for interested school districts.
A short-term intervention built on more than 20 years of research, Reading Recovery students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12-20 weeks with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher until such time as they can read within the average range of their class and demonstrate they can continue to achieve.
Developed in New Zealand in the 1970s, the not-for-profit program now operates in 49 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense schools for dependents, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland and has served more than 1 million U.S. children.
Cumulative 17-year results indicate that 81 percent of children completing the 12-20 week lessons reach the average of their class, with the rate similar across race and ethnicity. The Spanish version of Reading Recovery, Descubriendo La Lectura, which supports children learning to read in Spanish, is similarly successful. Follow-up studies indicate most Reading Recovery students also do well on standardized tests and maintain their gains in later years.
The use of Reading Recovery with students having academic or learning difficulties reduces the numbers of children misclassified as learning disabled.
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