Reading Recovery: How Much Does It Cost?

1. Reading Recovery:How Much Does It Cost? Christy Wall Harrelson Dr. G. Geer EDAD 684: School Finance-Ethics Spring 2011

2. What is Reading Recovery? • Early intervention for struggling emerging readers (the bottom 20% of the first grade class) • For first grade students only • One-on-one • Provided by a trained, highly-certified teacher • 12-20 weeks of instruction and intervention • 30 minutes of daily instruction • Supplements rather than replaces classroom reading instruction (in ADDITION TO what students are already receiving, not in place of) • Data-driven

3. A typical Reading Recovery lesson consists of… • Familiar re-reads (reading familiar books for fluency and comprehension) • Reading the book from the previous day’s lesson to complete a running record (data collection) • Working with magnetic letters and words (sound and spelling patterns) • Writing a story • Putting together a cut-up story (structured language) • Introducing and reading a new book

4. Vision and Goals: Why Reading Recovery? “The goal of Reading Recovery is to dramatically reduce the number of first-grade students who have extreme difficulty learning to read and write and to reduce the cost of these learners to educational systems.” -Reading Recovery: Basic Facts www.readingrecovery.org

5. What does this have to do with us? • We want the most bang for our buck. • Reading Recovery produces consistent results in a short amount of time (81% of students graduating from the program in South Carolina in the 2009-2010 school year reached or surpassed grade level performance). • Early interventions help prevent the effects of low performance such as… • truancy, • continued poor performance, • increases in the number of students labeled with learning disabilities, • increases in the needs for special support staff to address learning difficulties later on, • increases in drop-out rates, • “reduced employment opportunities” (from www.readingrecovery.org), • and involvement in criminal behavior.

6. So…how much does it cost?

7. Let’s compare… A cost comparison example:Calculations for estimated annual per-pupil cost based on a teacher salary and benefits of $60,000 annually. - From “Reading Recovery Is Cost Effective” www.readingrecovery.org

8. Costs are based on… • Average teacher salary (found on state report cards) • Adjusted teacher cost (fringe benefits) • Annual spending per pupil (state report cards) • Pupil-teacher ratio (state report cards) • Number of Reading Recovery Full-time Equivalent (FTE) teachers (1 FTE equals 8 slots) • Number of students served per FTE (number of FTE’s in the district divided by the total number of students served) • Cost per student served

9. Formula for determining cost per pupil is as follows… Step 1: Calculate the Adjusted Teacher Salary/Cost Average teacher salary x 1.3 (allocated for fringe benefits) Step 2: Determine the Number of FTE’s (full-time equivalent teachers) for Reading Recovery Total Number of RR Slots / 8 (number of slots taught by an FTE teacher) Step 3: Determine the Number of RR Students Served per FTE Number of Students Served / Number of FTE’s Step 4: Determine Reading Recovery per Pupil Cost Adjusted Teacher Salary / Number of RR Students Served per FTE

10. In Horry County, for example,… (Information based on the 2009-2010 District Report Card) Average teacher salary-$50,257.00 Step 1: Adjusted teacher cost (salary)-$65,334.10 ($50,257.00 x 1.3, with 1.3 accounting for fringe benefits) Step 2: Number of FTE’s for Reading Recovery-15 (120 / 8) Step 3: Number of Students Served per FTE-14 (210 / 15) Step 4: Cost per Reading Recovery Pupil-$4,355.61

11. How does this compare for Horry County? Cost Comparison for Horry County: Calculations for estimated annual per-pupil cost based on a teacher salary and benefits of $50,257 annually.

12. Training/Start Up Costs The following costs are incurred by the district choosing to implement the Reading Recovery program. The costs apply to each teacher trained to provide Reading Recovery instruction. • Starter set of materials for implementation-$3,000 • Teacher textbooks-$150 • Tuition cost for graduate course required for training-$3,500 • Support fee for regional training site-$3,000 • Continuing contract fee-$300 a year/$900 over expected 3-years of Reading Recovery instruction TOTAL-$10,550 per teacher trained

13. And the total is… For a district like Horry County considering… • 15 Reading Recovery teachers x $10,550 • 210 students served x $4,355.61 …the total cost of implementing Reading Recovery for one full year comes roughly to a grand total of… $1,072,928 That is roughly 4.57 % of the total $234,718,979.00 Horry County spent on instruction last year.

14. References • Assad, S. & Condon, M.A. (1996). Demonstrating the cost effectiveness of reading recovery: Because it makes a difference. Network News: A Newsletter Published by the Reading Recovery Council of North America, Winter, 1-3. • Gomez Bellenge, F.X. (2002). Measuring the cost of reading recovery: A practical approach. Journal of Reading Recovery, Fall, 47-54. • McBride, M. (2010). Computing the cost of reading recovery to your district. Retrieved from http://www.clemson.edu/readingrecovery/CostofRR.ppt • Ohio State University Reading Recovery . (2010). Requirements and costs for the training of reading recovery teachers in ohio. Retrieved from http://www.rrosu.org/Becoming/REQUIREMENTS_AND_COSTS_ Amended_Oct_2010.pdf • Reading Recovery Council of North America. (2010). Reading recovery: A guide for decision makers. Retrieved from http://www.readingrecovery.org