Increasing the Reading Achievement of At-Risk Children Through Direct Instruction: Evaluation of the Rodeo Institute for Teacher Excellence (RITE)

This article describes an evaluation of a program, the Rodeo Institute for Teacher Excellence (RITE), which addresses at-risk students' failure to develop reading skills. The evaluation included all Grade K-2 students participating in the program and in comparison schools selected to serve as a control group. Results indicated that the RITE program was successful at increasing the reading abilities of students in at-risk schools. Children who began the RITE program early and who spent more years in the program outperformed all other students. Intervention with teachers was related to improvement in observed teaching skills (behavior management and teacher corrections), and successful implementation of programmatic teaching techniques was related to student performance. These findings close the trainer-teacher-student feedback loop by showing that teacher behavior relates to student performance.