RAND recently published an assessment of the use/impact of reading coaches in Florida’s public middle schools, Supporting Literacy Across the Sunshine State: A Study of Florida Middle School Reading Coaches. North Carolina has a similar initiative, but we call them 21st Century Literacy Coaches. I call them consultants.
Anyway, the idea is straightforward – teach teachers how to teach reading, even though they should have already been taught how to teach reading, especially if they will be teaching reading. Apparently, it is the reform du jour for states that have low reading scores.
The RAND study found:
…coaches who possessed reading graduate degrees, credentials, or endorsements were associated with higher mathematics achievement, though not with higher reading achievement. (p. 180)
The evidence is mixed regarding the impact of coaching on achievement. Having a state-funded coach was associated with small [Note: very small; effect size was 0.06] but significant improvements in average annual gains in reading for two of the four cohorts [years] analyzed. (p. 183)
Aside from reviewing data, very few coach activities were associated with achievement. Further, variation in coaching implementation does not appear to have a differential impact on students with lower previous achievement scores. (p. 184)
Bottom line: reading coaches in Florida are having a negligible effect on student achievement.
