New What Works Clearinghouse Study Review on Intervention for English Learners

 Reading Recovery Council of North America’s Descubriendo La Lectura

Spanish-speaking English learners may benefit from Spanish literacy instruction as it allows them to maintain their home language and cultural identity and leverage their Spanish literacy skills to support their English literacy development. Borman and colleagues (2019) examined the impact of Descubriendo La Lectura, a one-on-one Spanish language tutoring program that aims to support first grade English learners’ literacy skills. The intervention is intended to be used with students who are experiencing difficulties learning to read and write. Descubriendo La Lectura is implemented in Spanish by trained teachers and includes structured reading and phonics activities.

Study design: Borman and colleagues (2019) randomly assigned students in 22 schools to either receive Descubriendo La Lectura immediately (78 students) or to receive typical classroom instruction and receive Descubriendo La Lectura later in the school year after the study was complete (74 students). All students were Spanish-speaking English learners and experienced difficulties with reading. Almost all students were Hispanic (99 percent).

Study findings: Students who were offered Descubriendo La Lectura had higher Spanish literacy, reading fluency, and alphabetics (letter identification, sounds in words, print concepts) scores based on the Instrumento de Observación and higher literacy scores based on the Logramos compared with students who had not received the tutoring. However, the intervention had no discernible effects on English language outcomes based on composite or subtest scores of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

WWC study rating: This study meets WWC standards without reservations. Access the full study review here, in the WWC’s review of individual studies database.

Effectiveness tier: The study meets Department of Education standards for Promising Evidence (Tier 3) because the study has favorable, statistically significant findings and meets WWC standards. See the video titled Using the WWC to Identify ESSA Evidence Ratings to learn more about these criteria.

Review more interventions for ELs here: WWC Interventions for English Learners