In about an hour from the time I’m posting this, you can have a chance to participate in a free Webinar about the impact on Investing in Innovation, or “i3,” grant from the U.S. Department of Education may have in the expansion of the Success for All reading program. The 5-year grant for $49 million is intended to scale-up the program in elementary schools by creating local coaching support centers in high-poverty neighborhoods, according to the description of the grant posted by the Education Department.
The Webinar is scheduled from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. today, Eastern time, and features presenters Robert E. Slavin and Nancy Madden, who founded the Success for All program. Mary Beyda, the superintendent for the Roosevelt School District in Phoenix, Ariz., will be a guest.
Lots of English-language learners attend schools that use Success for All. I wrote earlier this year about a study that compared results for students who used the bilingual version of the program versus those who used the English-only version. The results turned out to be about the same for both groups of students by the time they finished 4th grade.
In September, the What Works Clearinghouse of the Education Department featured two nuanced differences in outcomes between the two groups. While “statistically insignificant,” they were still “noteworthy” and favored the English-immersion approach, the clearinghouse concluded.