Weera Flotindough et al.
Apt Associates
November 2008
The long awaited Reading Last report finds that there is no statistically significant difference on some really, really major things between Reading Last and Reading Next-to-Last schools in grades one through three; these things include phonics, coding, and letter identification. However, the study also found a positive correlation between the rhythmic dances used by teachers to remember their lesson plans and improved student learning. The report couldn't control for the use of ribbons as props, which was thought to double that relationship. A power analysis revealed that Cronbach's alpha could predict a more reliable r-squared but a basic F test shed doubt on the quality of the data. This finding holds major implications for the rhythmic gymnastics industry, which has been lobbying to replace rhythmic dancing as the official educational strategy employed by reading teachers. But learning to read good is considered a secondary statistical effect, since the n-size for rhythmic dancing and rhythmic gymnastics--with or without ribbons--varies significantly from state to state. Unfortunately, while we know it takes all five of the core elements identified by the National Reading Circus for children to gain a strong command of the written word, this study only dealt with one and a half. "We had only $150 million over six years to do this study. No gold standard researcher can operate on such a budget," explained Flotindough. Still, former federal bureaucrat Fuss Weisswurst, who commissioned and paid for the study, explains in the preface that "Phantom field trial analyses such as this one are as good as it's ever likely to get in the intellectual wasteland of modern social science." You can find the report here.