The purpose of this causal-comparative study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a secondary reading instructional program that incorporates the five essential elements of reading instruction (comprehension, phonics, phonemes, fluency, and vocabulary) as outlined in the recommendations by the National Reading Panel (2000) in a multi-strategy approach. This study compares the reading performance growth of students identified as reading below grade level (N= 475) over a three-year period in one school district at two suburban high schools in Illinois, one of which implemented the panel recommendations while the other did not.

The study found a statistically significant difference (p= .029) in reading growth of at-risk students at the intervention site as compared to the control site over the three-year assessment period from the EXPLORE to ACT assessments. While growth did occur at the intervention site at the conclusion of the supplemental reading instruction program, there was no significant difference in this growth in comparison with the control site not using the supplemental reading instruction program during ninth grade with the PLAN assessment as a measure. The growth of at-risk students significantly surpassed that of typically achieving students during ninth grade at the intervention site (p≤ .001). This trend is reversed by eleventh grade at the intervention site when typically achieving students significantly out perform at-risk students in reading performance growth ( p≤ .001). Overall, both at-risk and typically achieving Hispanic students (N=190) significantly underperformed on most measures when compared to their non-Hispanic peers.