Burst:Reading
Study: Pappas et al. (2015)

Describe how students were selected to participate in the study:

Research staff were responsible for recruiting districts and/or individual schools for participation in the study. Initial contact was in the form of a brief description of the study sent as a recruitment flyer via e-mail to either district leaders or individual Principals within districts. A meeting either on the phone or in person was then held with districts/schools interested in hearing more about the study and Burst. Research staff also worked with Account Managers to recruit schools using various methods such as recruitment flyers and existing relationships with customer accounts. The final sample includes 57 elementary schools that serve ethnically diverse, lower income student populations. Participating schools represent approximately 12,000 Kindergarten through third-grade students from ten states and include 14 school districts.

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

The Burst intervention algorithm determines individual student eligibility based on DIBELS Benchmark Status or risk category (i.e., Red, Yellow, and Green). Students who were identified as At Risk (Red) or Some Risk (Yellow) at the pre-test are considered eligible for Burst intervention. The table below provides the DIBELS Composite Scores corresponding to the 25th percentile and 30th percentile for each grade as determined in a national norming study conducted by Dewey, Kaminski, & Good (2014) as well as the percentage of students in the Treatment and Control groups whose scores fell below each of the percentile thresholds. It is important to note that DIBELS Benchmark Status for each grade was not determined according to norm-referenced methodology; that is, risk was determined through prediction of later success on an outcome measure and not determined according to percentile ranks. Students who are categorized as Red (Well Below Benchmark) likely need intensive support. Their odds of achieving subsequent early literacy goals are approximately 10%-20% and those students are unlikely to achieve subsequent reading benchmarks unless provided with substantial, intensive instructional support. Students who are categorized as Yellow (Below Benchmark) means they likely need strategic support and the odds of achieving subsequent early literacy goals are roughly 40-60% for students with skills in this range. Students with scores in this range typically need strategic, targeted instructional support to ensure that make adequate progress and achieve subsequent reading benchmarks (Good et al., 2013). Therefore, while it is not expected that all students eligible for Burst would fall below the 25th or 30th percentiles, all students eligible for Burst intervention were identified based on risk and need for additional instructional support.

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 treatment program is the Burst:Reading literacy intervention.

Specify which condition is the control condition:

The control condition consists of schools not receiving the Burst:Reading literacy intervention (i.e., business as usual). Schools assigned to the control condition also received access to the DIBELS: Next assessment in grades K-3.

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):

N/A

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.

As soon as schools in a single geographic area within a district fully agreed to participate, they were randomly assigned to Treatment or Control conditions by researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR). Random assignment procedures were as follows: (1) ISR staff received relevant school level demographic and prior achievement data for the group of schools to be randomly assigned. The actual data used in matching varied depending on jurisdiction, but typically included multiple prior years of data on school achievement in reading, mathematics, and writing (if available), data on school size, and data on percentage White and Free Lunch students at a school. (2) With these data in hand, ISR researchers used the nbpMatching package in the R statistical environment to produce matches using the covariates at hand (Cole, Bo, & Greevy, 2015; R Core Team, 2013). (3) Once matched pairs were formed, schools were randomly assigned to Treatment or Control conditions. (4) After schools were randomly assigned, they were notified of their condition. Using these procedures, 29 schools were randomly assigned to the Treatment group and 28 schools were assigned to the Control group. Given the odd number of schools participating in the study, one Treatment group school was matched to two Control schools. Schools assigned to the Treatment group implement Burst with Tier 2 students considered to be struggling based on DIBELS: Next composite scores and therefore eligible to receive additional support.

What was the unit of assignment?

Schools

If other, please specify:

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?

Prior to implementing Burst, school personnel participated in a standardized training series that included a one-day on-site session hosted by Professional Development staff to prepare teachers or interventionists. This training followed a common “see one, do one” model in the class with students, so teachers could quickly learn, through context, how the Burst instruction should be delivered. Teachers implemented Burst instruction from August through May, or for the duration of their academic school year. Treatment schools also received one to two on-site support site visits by a member of the Educational Support Team. The support site visit served as an opportunity to observe Burst implementation and provide teachers with immediate constructive feedback.

Describe when and how fidelity of treatment information was obtained.

Members of the Amplify Educational Support Team (EST) conducted Burst Fidelity site visits to treatment schools during the 2014-2015 school year. The goal during each site visit was to observe one (or more) Burst sessions for each grade level. Although not always possible due to scheduling conflicts, efforts were made to observe different Teachers/Interventionist implementing Burst during each site visit. Fidelity data were collected via the Burst fidelity checklist, which was developed and piloted specifically for this study. The fidelity checklist includes 21 items that capture key components of Burst implementation rated on a three point likert scale (see Table 1 in the cited report for further detail). EST members underwent a day-long training on using the checklist and demonstrated at least 85% inter-rater agreement prior to collecting data in the field. There were two methods for collecting data: either the Observer could complete the checklist in real time during or immediately following an observation or the Observer could use a structured notes guide during the observation and translate notes into ratings on the checklist immediately following the Burst observation.

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

The below table summarizes the ratings on six dimensions of program delivery. The observation covered 16 schools by 3 observers for K-3. 35 responses in total. The average number of students in Burst groups was 4.33 when observed. The ratings used a three-point scale (0-“None or almost none/poor”/1-“Some or fair”/2-“All or almost all/good”). The average ratings on all six dimensions generally ranged from about 1.43 to 1.91 with a mean of 1.76 (71.50% to 95.50% with a mean of 88.12% —well above the 75%).

Was the fidelity measure also used in control classrooms?

No, the Burst fidelity checklist is specific to the Burst:Reading early literacy intervention and therefore not applicable to control schools.

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:

Student-level post-test performance results on each of the post-test measures are analyzed using one-way ANCOVA (Analysis of covariance) to compare the effect of intervention program vs. control groups. The pre-test of DIBELS composite score is used as covariate in order to obtain the adjusted post-test means. All the students in treatment and control schools identified as at-risk (below benchmark) by DIBELS composite score at the pre-test (i.e., eligible for the intervention) are included in the analyses.