The purpose of the study was to compare the reading performance on the third grade state reading assessment of students identified in first grade as at-risk struggling readers with the performance on the same assessment of their peers who were not identified in first grade as at-risk struggling readers. Data were collected from an urban school district in North-Central Texas for third grade students across 14 schools receiving Reading First funding. The 414 subjects in the study were from Reading First schools that adopted Voyager Expanded Learning'sRTM Universal Literacy (Voyager System) as the core reading curriculum in kindergarten through third grade. Subjects in the study received core reading instruction in the Voyager System in first, second, and third grade in the school years 2005-2006, 2006-2007, and 2007-2008. Data were collected on subjects' demographics (gender, ethnicity, English language proficiency, and socioeconomic status), Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) third grade scale scores for 2007-2008, and Voyager benchmarks for first, second, and third grade. Only students who were continuously enrolled in the Voyager System were retained for the study. A series of two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVAs) were conducted to determine if the earlier identified reading proficiency gap between at-risk readers and non at-risk readers based on gender, ethnicity, English language proficiency, and socioeconomic status closed after three years of instruction in the Voyager System. The data showed that there was not a statistically significant differences between males and females; African Americans, Hispanics, and White students; students of limited English proficiency and their English speaking peers; or between any socioeconomic class of students. It can be conjectured that Voyager Universal Literacy did close the achievement gap between male and female students; African American, Hispanic, and White students; LEP and non-LEP students; and students from all economic levels.
The goals of Universal Literacy are to close reading proficiency gaps and for all
children to read on grade level by the end of third grade. ... Panel: phonological
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension (National
Reading Panel, 2000; Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2004). ... If needed, a built-in
daily intervention of 1 0-20 minutes is provided in addition to 11 The Voyager
System.