A special education intervention, HEROES, has students learning to read faster in 12 weeks than in their first two years of school. Emily Rodgers, associate professor of reading and literacy, and Jerry D’Agostino, professor of quantitative research, evaluation and measurement, began the project after completing a major scale-up of the one-to-one intervention, Reading Recovery.

The scale-up helped 62,000 struggling first-graders catch up with peers, and helped 335,586 more students read in small groups.

“We had strong literacy theory and proven evidence that children would progress if they had one-to-one instruction using solid literacy teaching practices,” Rodgers said.

“When students practiced oral reading of a familiar book, then a new book, for at least 75 minutes per week with their trained teacher, they made significantly greater progress than before the intervention.” Reading growth was between 2.5 and 3 times greater while the children engaged in HEROES, D’Agostino added.