Accepted for Inclusion 2/1/1998                                                                                Home
Re-accepted 8/1/2001
Description Updated 9/1/2001

Success for All was founded by Robert Slavin, Nancy Madden, and a team of developers from Johns Hopkins University. It is now disseminated by the nonprofit Success for All Foundation in Baltimore, directed by the founders. The model was first implemented in an elementary school in Baltimore in 1987. The following year it expanded to 6 schools (5 in Baltimore and 1 in Philadelphia). By June 2001, it had grown to 1,800 schools.

Success for All restructures elementary schools (usually high poverty Title I schools) to ensure that every child learns to read in the early grades. The idea is to prevent reading problems from appearing in the first place and to intervene swiftly and intensively if problems do appear.

Success for All prescribes specific curricula and instructional strategies for teaching reading, including shared story reading, listening comprehension, vocabulary building, sound blending exercises, and writing activities. Teachers are provided with detailed materials for use in the classroom. Students often work cooperatively, reading to each other and discussing story content and structure. From second through sixth grade, students use basals or novels (but not workbooks). All students are required to spend 20 minutes at home each evening reading books of their choice.

Students are grouped according to reading level for one 90-minute reading period per day. The rest of the day they are assigned to regular age-grouped classes. Every eight weeks, teachers assess student progress using formal measures of reading comprehension as well as observation and judgment. The assessments determine changes in the composition of the reading groups and help identify students in need of extra assistance. Those students receive one-on-one tutoring for 20 minutes per day at times other than regular reading or math periods. First graders get priority for tutoring. Tutors are generally certified teachers, though well-qualified paraprofessionals may tutor children with less severe reading problems.

Because parental involvement is considered essential to student success, each Success for All school forms a Family Support Team, which encourages parents to read to their children, involves parents in school activities, and intervenes when problems at home interfere with a child’s progress in school. The operation of Success for All is coordinated at each school by a full-time facilitator who helps plan the program and coach teachers. Finally, an advisory committee composed of the principal, facilitator, teacher and parent representatives, and family support staff meets regularly to review the progress of the program.

From the beginning there has been a strong focus in Success for All on research and evaluation. Numerous studies conducted by developers and others have compared scores on standardized reading tests (specifically, the Durrell Oral Reading Scale and several scales from the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test) for students in Success for All schools and control schools. For example, in one study (Madden et al., 1993), students at the first five Success for All schools outperformed students at control schools by statistically significant margins in every grade. By third grade, the advantage for Success for All students translated into a grade equivalent difference of more than eight months. For students in the lowest 25% of their cohorts, the effects were even greater. Several other studies (Dianda & Flaherty, 1995; Slavin & Madden, 1999a) have reported that English language learners in Success for All elementary schools outperform those in control schools.

Results have been similar for all but a handful of studies following the same research design. When the results of all these studies are combined (involving thousands of students), statistically significant positive effects are found for Success for All cohorts at every grade level. By fifth grade, Success for All cohorts score more than a year higher on reading measures than control groups (Slavin & Madden, 1999b).

According to a recent study (Borman & Hewes, 2000), these benefits for students appear to persist beyond participation in the program. Students who attended Success for All elementary schools outscored control students by a statistically significant margin on the eighth-grade CTBS/4 reading and mathematics tests and were less likely to be referred to special education during their middle school years.

The impact of Success for All has also been measured using statewide assessments. In Indiana, first and second grade students at two Success for All schools scored higher on the statewide ISTEP test than control students. There was little difference, however, in the scores of third graders on the test (Ross, Smith, & Casey, 1997). More recently, the performance of all 111 Success for All schools in Texas was compared to all other schools in Texas on TAAS, Texas’s statewide assessment (Hurley, Chamberlain, Slavin, & Madden, 2000). TAAS reading scores for grades three, four, and five were averaged for all Success for All schools, which were divided into cohorts depending on the year of implementation. Gains for each cohort from the year prior to implementation to 1998 were compared to gains for the state as a whole over the same period. Each Success for All cohort outgained the statewide cohort by at least 4 percentage points. Overall, Success for All schools outgained other schools by 5.9 percentage points, a statistically significant difference.

Success for All recently developed a middle school model, but no evaluations of this model have been completed.

· Project Capacity: The Success for All Foundation, located in Baltimore, is the model’s national headquarters. There are also 20 regional centers throughout the U.S. Overall, the foundation employs about 240 full-time trainers, including 180 reading trainers, 20 family support trainers, and 15 middle school trainers. The other 25 trainers focus on the mathematics, science, and social studies components of Roots & Wings. (See the description of Roots & Wings for more details.) There are also 10 part-time trainers.

· Faculty Buy-In: At least 80% of a school’s professional staff must vote on a secret ballot to adopt the program.

· Initial Training: In the spring prior to implementation, the school’s principal and designated building facilitator attend a week-long training session in their region. In August, project staff members visit the school for three days of intensive training for the full school staff, plus a fourth day for tutors.

· Follow-Up Coaching: Over the first year of implementation, trainers provide at least 26 person-days of on-site assistance to introduce new components of the program, coach teachers, and work with the building facilitator. Over time, the facilitator (a full-time position) assumes most of the coaching and problem-solving responsibilities.

· Networking: Success for All supports a Web site, publishes a newsletter, and hosts an annual national conference.

· Implementation Review: Three times during the first year, two trainers visit each school for two days to assess the extent of implementation. The trainers interview staff, observe classes, examine data, and write a summary of their findings. They also use these opportunities to coach staff and consult with the facilitator. (These 12 person-days are part of the 26 mentioned above.) Implementation visits continue at a lower level after the first year (8 person-days in year 2, and 6 person-days each year thereafter).