Data presented at the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) board meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 21, revealed that different literacy intervention programs have a greater impact on elementary and K-8 students, depending on their grade level.
Over the last year, the district implemented two pilot Literacy Intervention programs across various elementary and K-8 schools: Leveled Literacy Instructions (LLI)—currently implemented at 31 sites— and WonderWorks (WW) which is used at 23 sites.
These interventions are designed to help students who need support to achieve grade-level literacy and are meant to supplement, not replace, the traditional learning structure.
Around 4,000 students received these literacy interventions, and around 1,200 of those students were English Learners.
To more accurately determine growth, students in the intervention were compared to similarly academically performing students who were not in the intervention as opposed to comparing them to the general student population.
“There’s a couple of competing data points that we’re looking at. Last year was the first year we implemented iReady, meanwhile, teachers were providing diagnostics assessments to determine early on what students needed the intervention,” assistant superintendent of elementary schools, Brian Moskovitz said.
Assistant superintendent of research Chris Brown pointed out that the amount of Hispanic and Black students who receive interventions is higher than their enrollment rates. Hispanic students have a 60% enrollment rate but 67% receive interventions; Black students have an 11% enrollment rate but 15% are in these intervention programs.
When looking at the data of all grade groups overall, there wasn’t much of a growth difference between students in literacy interventions and non-intervention students. However, there are differential impacts across grade levels when looking at that data broken down.
“You can’t just automatically apply the kind of one-size-fits-all program, as we know now, so as we’re continuing to explore, we’re thinking about this year, how do we fill some of those gaps, but more importantly, [what about] next year?”
Brian Moskovitz, assistant superintendent of elementary schools
For example, whereas intervention students in kindergarten and first grade grew less than no-intervention students, students in grades 2-5 grew more than their non-intervention peers.
When comparing the growth data of each program, LLI intervention students grew similarly to students not in intervention whereas students in WW intervention grew 7 more points than their non-intervention peers. LLI seemed to have more impact on grades 3-5, whereas WW had a greater impact on grades 1-3.
LLI is stronger in vocabulary and building conceptual language. WW, one the other hand, has a stronger foundational skills program.
“So it’s actually really nice that we did a pilot with two different programs because it now starts to show that the programs, because they have different compositions and makeups, actually impact different grade levels slightly differently,” Brown said.
Moskovitz pointed out some of the challenges when it comes to implementing these interventions. One of the biggest challenges was the chronic absenteeism among students and unfilled absences from teachers due to lack of staffing.
“If students are absent more than 20 days in a school year, you can imagine that during a program that’s taught every day of the week, the disruption in the service is going to result in the impact of the program,” Moskovitz said.
Scheduling interventions presents another challenge as the district attempts to balance providing intervention to the highest number of students without interrupting their regular academic day.
“That’s something that we’re constantly looking at, how do we find the right space to provide interventions?” Moskovitz said.
Based on the data findings, the district will make adjustments to the literacy program in 2022-2023 including the incorporation of a new intervention program focused on foundational reading skills to supplement both WW and LLI for K-3 students.
“You can’t just automatically apply the kind of one-size-fits-all program, as we know now, so as we’re continuing to explore, we’re thinking about this year, how do we fill some of those gaps, but more importantly, [what about] next year?” Moskovitz said.
