A Truly Innovative Reading Solution

Evidence of Effectiveness

Read Right is Based in Brain Science and Validated through Research 

Educators and struggling readers are very familiar with the standard approach to reading improvement:  Explicit phonics instruction, followed by intensive practice at decoding and individual word identification. Next, improve the speed at which you can identify words and use a variety of strategies to improve your comprehension. Believing that explicit instruction in these "basic skills" was the correct path to reading improvement, America between 2002 and 2008 invested $6 billion to help schools improve early reading instruction, following the recommendations of the National Reading Panel. The improvement effort was managed under the U.S. Department of Education's Reading First program, a cornerstone initiative of No Child Left Behind.

As 2008 drew to a close, the U.S. Department of Education released the Reading First Impact Study Final Report, examining the effectiveness of the program. The conclusions surprised many: The extensive study involving thousands of children found that Reading First teachers had received appropriate training in basic skills and that these teachers were spending significantly more time teaching the skills to students. However, in spite of the effort, NO significant improvement was found in the ability of these students to understand what they were reading!

The study results suggest that basic skill instruction that begins with phonics, decoding, and individual word identification is NOT the right path to produce reading excellence.

Read Right Systems, led by Dee Tadlock, Ph.D., has known this since and before the organization was founded in 1991. Recently, what our organization knows about reading was validated through gold-standard research, and that research has been verified as being of high quality by the experts at the National Center on Response to Intervention. Here's what the independent research found about Read Right tutoring: using NO explicit instruction in decoding or individual word identification, Read Right tutoring helped the majority of students improve siginficantly in reading in just one semester, half the time required for the most successful methods studied under the federal Striving Readers program. Read Right methodology agrees that children need some phonics knowledge (they need to know the stable letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make), but the methodology reflects the belief that over-emphasis on decoding and individual word identification actually have the potential to cause reading problems. Rather than use explicit instruction in basic skills, Read Right methodology uses implicit procedural learning to help children, teens, and adults figure out all of the complex neural activity required to make reading efficient and effective.

One more thing: It is important to know that recent brain science has revealed that brains are "plastic." This means that they are wonderfully adaptable to change. Because of "brain plasticity," virtually everyone who can speak in sentences can become an efficient and effective reader. The only requirement is that they receive the right kind of support and assistance. What is the right kind of support? Implicit procedural learning, NOT basic skill instruction.

If you would like to know more about the science underlying Read Right methodology, we recommend two publications by Dee Tadlock, Ph.D:

  • Read Right! Coaching Your Child to Excellence in Reading, McGraw-Hill 2005
  • Interactive Constructivism and Reading: The Nature of Neural Networks Challenges the Phonological Processing Hypothesis (2004), a monograph available for download. Request a free download from Rhonda Stone at rhondas@readright.com

Read Right Studies and Other Recognition

  

Examples of the Scientific Bases Underlying Read Right's Methods

Gold Standard Research:

Scott C, Nelsestuen K, Autio E, Deussen T, and Hanita M (2010). Evaluation of Read Right in Omaha Middle and High Schools, Portland, OR, Education Northwest.

Findings: Read Right methodology demonstrated "significant positive effect" in a controlled study involving 400+ middle and high school students. Researchers measured an effect size of .23 after an average 18 hours of Read Right tutoring delivered during one semester (the probability that the results were achieved by chance: p=.000). African American students measured even greater gains: .34 with a probability of p=.007.

  

On constructivist theory and implicit procedural learning in children:

Piaget J. (1950): The Psychology of Intelligence. Translated from French: Percy M and Berlyne DE. London: Routledge. Also, Inhelder B. and Piaget J. (1964): The Early Growth of Logic in the Child. New York: Harper & Row.

On children who teach themselves to read through implicit processes before they start formal schooling: Durkin D. (1965): Phonics and the Teaching of Reading. 2nd Ed. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Third Party Studies:

  • Litzenberger J (2001a): Reading Research Results: Using Read Right as an Intervention Program for At-Risk 10th Graders (final report available)
  • Litzenberger J (2001b): Reading Research Results: Using Read Right as an Intervention Program for Elementary and Middle School Students, a Longitudinal Study (final report available)

Publication in Peer-Reviewed Journal:

Tadlock D (1986): A Practical Application of Psycholinguistics and Piaget's Theory to Reading Instruction, Reading Psychology, Volume 7, Number 3, 1986, 183-195.

Additional citations:

  • Tadlock D "Cognitive Structures and Learning to Read," in ERIC (ED 185 501), February, 1980.
  • Tadlock D “Growing a Literate Workforce, Simpson Reads Right,” Target—The Periodical of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, Volume 8, Number 3, May/June, 1992, 7-14.

 

  

Citing research supporting brain "plasticity" (our innate ability to change performance by remodeling neural networks):

  • Hebb DO (1966): A Textbook of Psychology. Philadelphia: Saunders
  • Allman WF (1989): Apprentices of Wonder: Inside the Neural Network Revolution. New York: Bantam Books
  • Johnson G (1992): In the Palaces of Memory. New York: Vintage Books
  •  Ratey JJ (2001): A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. New York: Pantheon Books
  • Schwartz JM and Begley S: (2002). The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. New York: Regan Books/Harper Collins
  • LeDoux J (2002): Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. New York: Penguin Books

 

 

 

Cited as Effective in Secondary Reading Research:

  • Peterson CL, Caverly DC, Nicholson SA, O’Neal S, Cusenbary S (2000): Building reading proficiency at the secondary school level: A guide to resources. Austin, TX: Southwest Texas State University, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.
  • Found effective through independent, gold standard research by Education Northwest, formerly known as the Northwest Regional Educational Research Laboratory.

ALSO:

  • Recommended by the National Drop-Out Prevention Center as effective intervention
  • Included on multiple state lists for programs qualifying as providers of Supplemental Educational Services

Awards for Read Right’s Work with Schools & Corporations:

  • In September, 2003, Southwest Region Ohio School Boards Association named Read Right an Outstanding New Student Program. Read Right was in the top three and was among 12 programs that earned the award from 53 who were nominated.
  • Dee Tadlock, Ph.D., developer of Read Right, was nominated for the prestigious Brock International Prize for Innovation in Education and placed third out of nine nominees.
  • Saskatchewan Labour Force Development Board’s Training in Excellence Award, March, 1999.
  • Sales Association of the Paper Industry Literacy Achievement Award, March 2001 (Awarded in recognition of the fact that 3 out of 5 paper companies receiving the award in recent years were implementing Read Right projects. 

 

  

On brain research examining neural activation patterns associated with word identification and/or sentence reading:

  • Carpenter PA, Just MA, Keller TA, Eddy WF, Thulborn KR (1999): Time course of fMRI-activation in language and spacial networks during sentence comprehension. Neuroimage 10:216-224.
  • Keller TA, Carpenter P.A, and Just MA (2001): The Neural Bases of Sentence Comprehension: A fMRI Examination of Syntactic and Lexical Processing. Cerebral Cortex 11 (3): 223-37.
  • Price CJ, Winterburn D, Giraud AL, Moore CJ, Noppeney U (2003): Cortical Localization of the Visual and Auditory Word Form Areas: A Reconsideration of the Evidence. Brain and Language 86 (2): 272-86.
  • Price CJ and Devlin JT (2003): The Myth of the Visual Word Form Area. NeuroImage 19, Comments and Controversies, (473-81).
  • Vandenberghe R, Nobre AC, Price CJ (2002). The Response of Left Temporal Cortex to Sentences. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14: 550-60.
  • Constable RT, Pugh KR, Berroya E, Mencl WE, Westerveld M, Ni W, Shankweiler D (2004): Sentence complexity and input modality effects in sentence comprehension: an fMRI study. Neuroimage 22 (1): 11-21.
  • Lee D and Newman SD (2009): The Effect of Presentation Paradigm on Syntactic Processing: An Event-Related fMRI Study. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

 

 

 

 
 

Record of Replication:

The Read Right program has been well tested with projects implemented at over 500 sites in 43 states and Canada with more than 3,130,000 hours of tutoring to date. It has been used successfully with over 84,000 students, including students classified as dyslexic, ADD, or learning disabled, as well as Title I students, ESL students, and other “non-labeled” students with reading problems. Projects have included adults (college, community-based, corrections, and workforce literacy) and children and teens of all ages, K-12.

 

 

 

    

Other research on related areas of brain function:

  • Turkeltaub PE, Weisberg J, Flowers D, Basu D, Eden G (2005): "The Neurobiological Basis of Reading: A Special Case of Skill Acquisition," In: Catts, H., & Kahmi, A. (Eds.) The connections between language and reading disabilities, pp103-130. Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum. 
  • Lavigne F, Lavigne P (2000): "Anticipatory Semantic Processes," International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, Volume 7.
  • Newman SD, Ikuta T, Burns T (2010): The effect of semantic relatedness on syntactic analysis: An fMRI study. Brain and Language 113 (2), 51-58.