ALFA (Accelerating Literacy for Adolescents) Lab offers a semester-long program for ninth-grade students grappling with reading difficulties. The curriculum comprises three units, focusing on fundamental questions, with sessions lasting 90 minutes, conducted over one or two days per week. Students engage in small team rotations through four stations, fostering both individual and collaborative work. The primary objective is to enhance reading motivation, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency through captivating materials. This pedagogical approach not only fosters stronger teacher-student connections but also empowers students to articulate their ideas more confidently.
A recent study employed a regression discontinuity design to assess the impact of one semester of ALFA Lab enrollment on ninth-grade student outcomes. Eligibility was determined based on pretest reading scores, with students scoring below a predefined threshold assigned to the ALFA Lab, while those above served as the comparison group. The study involved four schools, encompassing a total of 1378 students over three years.
The findings yielded positive impact estimates of ALFA on reading achievement (for ITT, ES = +0.11; for TOT, ES = +0.10), reading motivation (for ITT, ES = +0.11; for TOT, ES = +0.15), and reading frequency (for ITT, ES = +0.43; for TOT, ES = +0.51) at the threshold. Although these estimates lacked statistical significance, Bayesian posterior distributions strongly suggest positive effects (for reading achievement, +0.83 for ITT and +0.80 for TOT; for reading motivation, +0.79 for ITT and +0.85 for TOT; for reading frequency from +0.27 to +0.65 for ITT and from +0.42 and +1.09 for TOT). Moreover, the research offers suggestive evidence that the ALFA approach may be particularly beneficial for African American and Hispanic male students. However, strong causal conclusions about ALFA’s positive effectiveness cannot be drawn, as lack of statistical significance may be due to the study’s potential underpowered nature, likely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the ALFA Lab results appear promising for further exploration of its effects.
Source: Davis, M. H., Schoeneberger, J., Rhoads, C., Mac Iver, D. J., Zhang, X., Mac Iver, M., & Spinney, S. (2024). Accelerating Literacy for Adolescents (ALFA): Evaluating ALFA Lab Using a Regression Discontinuity Study. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2024.2338129