7/22/2024

Impact of Lexia® Core5® Reading in Texas

PURPOSE: Faced with less than 33% of fourth grade students in Texas reading proficiently, the state launched an initiative to improve reading scores. As part of this initiative, many school districts in Texas began implementing Lexia® Core5® Reading to advance students’ reading achievement. This study focused on the impact of using Core5 on students’ TX STAAR Reading Language Arts (RLA) scores during the 2022–2023 school year.

METHOD: In this large-scale, quasi-experimental study, Lexia® researchers compared Texas schools that used Core5 and those that did not. Analyses included students in grades 3–5. There were 1,448 Core5 schools and 3,517 non-Core5 schools in the study. One set of analyses compared all Core5 and non-Core5 schools, and a second set of sensitivity analyses was conducted, closely matching Core5 schools to non-Core5 schools on 2022 STAAR RLA scores and demographic characteristics. Multiple linear regression models were used to predict the effect of using Core5 on 2023 STAAR RLA scores, controlling for the schools’ 2022 STAAR RLA scores.

KEY FINDINGS

• Students at schools that used Core5 scored an average of 4–5 points higher on the TX STAAR RLA assessment than students at schools that did not use Core5.
• Students at Core5 schools correctly answered more reading and writing items on the STAAR RLA assessment than students at non-Core5 schools.