An analysis of more than 22,600 K–5 students within the Charter Schools USA (CSUSA) network found that incorporating recommended use levels of the Lexia Reading Core5® program into instruction resulted in growth in reading skills during the 2016/17 school year, over and above that achieved with non-Core5 instruction. Among students who regularly reached their usage targets with Core5, the percentage working on skills in or above their grade level increased from 44 percent to 91 percent. Based on these results, CSUSA increased the number of schools using Core5 from five to 47 within the school year.
In most CSUSA schools, Core5 is used grade-wide for K–2 students, but the program is used only for intervention purposes for grades three through five. CSUSA assessed students’ reading abilities in the fall, winter and spring using the computer-administered, adaptive screening tool, NWEA™ MAP®. Performance was captured with RIT (Rasch unIT) scores, which measure student achievement on an equal-interval scale across all grades, and researchers compared students’ fall and spring levels in Core5 to their fall 2016 and spring 2017 MAP RIT scores.
For more information, visit www.lexialearning.com.
