Ignite Reading is one of many tutoring interventions unleashed upon America’s schools to try to mitigate learning loss experienced by students in the wake of pandemic-era school closures. The program is advertised as a one-to-one virtual tutoring service that leverages science-of-reading principles as well as individually-targeted, data-driven instruction to help boost the literacy development of young readers. The Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University conducted a comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation to assess Ignite Reading’s impact on student outcomes and its integration into districts’ instructional frameworks in Massachusetts. Their report was released in December.
Funding for the Ignite Reading intervention came from Boston’s One8 Foundation, which offered grants to districts wishing to access tutoring resources for the 2023–24 school year. In order to apply, districts had to be using a science of reading-aligned ELA curriculum, have provided appropriate professional development to all K–2 teachers, had to commit to literacy screenings for first graders, and had to identify a single staff member to be responsible for all aspects of the rollout. Grants were awarded based on the projected number of first graders with foundational reading needs (up to 300 individuals per district), and participating districts committed to maintaining an average tutoring attendance rate of at least 75 percent of eligible students.
A total of thirteen public school districts across the state received awards, each serving high-concentrations of students living in poverty. Researchers Amanda Neitzel and Joseph Reilly examined the program’s impact on 1,872 first-grade students who received tutoring in those districts, comparing their outcomes on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment to national norms, as well as a comparison group of 518 first graders who did not receive tutoring but were similar in all other respects. Tests were administered at the start of the school year before tutoring began, and again at the end of the year, once tutoring was completed.
The majority of students receiving tutoring were Hispanic (45 percent) or White (39 percent), with 40 percent classified as English learners and 14 percent receiving special education services. The vast majority of students (74 percent) exhibited kindergarten-level skills in start-of-year testing; the rest were mainly at a first-grade level, with a tiny fraction at second grade.
Tutored students showed significant gains in literacy outcomes, with an average improvement of 5.4 additional months of learning. The expected test score gain from start-of-year to end-of-year based on national norms was 80 points, but the tutoring group registered a much larger gain of 127.89 points. All subgroups of students experienced substantial growth, with only small differences between them. Additionally, far more students exhibited first-grade-level skills (64 percent) or second-grade-level skills (28 percent) on the end-of-year test, a huge improvement over the start-of-year data.
In the other comparison, against the non-treatment students in Massachusetts, the tutoring group also showed significantly higher literacy gains, with an effect size of 0.21 standard deviations. Interestingly however, the proportion of students exhibiting kindergarten-, first-grade- and second-grade-level skills at pre- and post-test were not significantly different between the two groups, although the reason for this is unclear.
The report also includes ample qualitative data gathered via surveys administered to participating educators, literacy specialists, principals, and district leaders. Among other findings, teachers were impressed with the ability of Ignite Reading to serve many students efficiently and reported seeing improvement in their students’ abilities, despite some lingering issues over technology access and reliability.
While it would be interesting to know what non-Ignite supports the comparison students in Massachusetts schools may have received above business-as-usual instruction, it nonetheless seems clear that the strong design and rigorous implementation of Ignite Reading had a positive impact on the students who could access it. Neitzel and Reilly are effusive in their conclusion, saying that the intervention “has demonstrated substantial promise as a scalable, virtual tutoring solution for improving early literacy outcomes.” But that only holds true if there are a lot of new dollars available—from philanthropic organizations or elsewhere—ready to expand the program widely. Massachusetts does seem bullish on funding tutoring, but unless Ignite Reading can lower its cost (approximately $2,500 per student annually), even the $38 million state lawmakers have pledged over the next five years will only scratch the surface of the need.
SOURCE: Amanda J. Neitzel and Joseph Reilly, “An Evaluation of Ignite Reading Virtual Literacy Tutoring in Massachusetts,” The Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University (December 2024).
