'Success For All' Is A Success For Most

By Dr. Marciene Mattleman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - 'Success for All', a whole-school literacy related program, founded in 1987 by Robert Slavin that showed great promise from the start, has been watched for years by educators looking for gains from what appeared to be promising early studies.

The program, which has grown to 1,000 schools with 300,000 participants nationally, is part of the federal Investing in Education initiative. It includes school-wide curriculum, tutors, bimonthly student assessments and teacher training.

Findings from the New York-based MDRC showed gains in kindergarten where students outperformed a demographically similar control group of 18 schools in word attack skills with poor and minority students benefitting as well.

At the 700-student Central Elementary School in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that failed repeatedly to meet adequate yearly progress, in the 2010-2011 school year, progress on 25 goals was made and the school had 1,000 fewer absences.

Read more about teacher strategies, professional development and program implementation in Education Week.