Math Recovery
Study: Smith et al. (2007)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

A 10-minute interview was conducted where each first grade student was asked to complete eight tasks. The tasks included counting visual objects, forward and backward number sequence, numeral identification and sequencing and elementary addition and subtraction. In addition, each student completed Woodcock Johnson III math tests including Math Fluency, Applied Problems, Quantitative Concepts and Math Reasoning instruments.

Describe how students were identified as being at risk for academic failure (AI) or as having emotional or behavioral difficulties (BI):

Those students that scored in the twenty-fifth percentile or below in both the MR and the WJIII protocols were identified as at-risk for academic failure.

ACADEMIC INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• below the 30th percentile on local or national norm, or
• identified disability related to the focus of the intervention?

%

BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION: What percentage of participants were at risk, as measured by one or more of the following criteria:

• emotional disability label,
• placed in an alternative school/classroom,
• non-responsive to Tiers 1 and 2, or
• designation of severe problem behaviors on a validated scale or through observation?

%

Specify which condition is the submitted intervention:

The students in the treatment group received 4 to 5 one-on-one tutoring sessions for 12 weeks from tutors trained in the Math Recovery method.

Specify which condition is the control condition:

The control group received normal classroom instruction with no tutoring.

If you have a third, competing condition, in addition to your control and intervention condition, identify what the competing condition is (data from this competing condition will not be used):

Using the tables that follow, provide data demonstrating comparability of the program group and control group in terms of demographics.

Grade Level

Race–Ethnicity

Socioeconomic Status

Disability Status

ELL Status

Gender

What method was used to determine students' placement in treatment/control groups?

Random

Please describe the assignment method or the process for defining treatment/comparison groups.

By randomly assigning the students selected for participation in the study each year to one of the three treatment cohorts or the wait list, we can establish the essential characteristics of an experimental design

What was the unit of assignment?

Other

If other, please specify:

Teachers and Students

Please describe the unit of assignment:

What unit(s) were used for primary data analysis?

Schools
Teachers
Students
Classes
Other
If other, please specify:

Please describe the unit(s) used for primary data analysis:

How was the program delivered?

Individually
Small Group
Classroom

What were the background, experience, training, and ongoing support of the instructors or interventionists?

The tutors were trained for one year in the Math Recovery. The training consisted of two weeks of coursework with three additional on site coaching sessions or distance video coaching. The training program includes a detailed explanation of the Learning Framework in Number and the Instructional Framework in Early number. Each tutor was released from half of their classroom duties to administer the math tutoring program.

Describe when and how fidelity of treatment information was obtained.

Charles Munter conducted a separate Master’s Thesis to test the fidelity of the MR study against other instruments. The videos of 107 program subjects were studied by five experienced MR instructors. Each video was independently coded with an instrument designed for the study. The MR scores were then compared to scores on Woodcock Johnson III testing instruments.

What were the results on the fidelity-of-treatment implementation measure?

The results in the Thesis study showed a 0.84 correlation between the MR instructor’s scores and the Woodcock Johnson III instruments where a 1.0 would be perfect fidelity.

Was the fidelity measure also used in control classrooms?

For any substantively (e.g., effect size ≥ 0.25 for pretest or demographic differences) or statistically significant (e.g., p < 0.05) pretest differences, please describe the extent to which these differences are related to the impact of the treatment. For example, if analyses were conducted to determine that outcomes from this study are due to the intervention and not pretest characteristics, please describe the results of those analyses here.

Please explain any missing data or instances of measures with incomplete pre- or post-test data.

If you have excluded a variable or data that are reported in the study being submitted, explain the rationale for exclusion:

Describe the analyses used to determine whether the intervention produced changes in student outcomes:

Throughout the program, students were observed by both intervention and outside MR tutors. The results were plotted into a three tier hierarchical linear growth model to show increasing or decreasing learning rates.