Program Description:

Read 180 is a balanced literacy program offered by HMH that is aimed at helping older struggling readers. System 44, is meant to be a complimentary program offered to students in need of more foundational instruction. 

According to What Works ClearingHouse Read 180 is “READ 180® is a reading program designed for struggling readers who are reading 2 or more years below grade level. It provides blended learning instruction (i.e., combining digital media with traditional classroom instruction), student assessment, and teacher-professional development. READ 180® is delivered in 45- to 90-minute sessions that include whole-group instruction, three small-group rotations, and a whole-class wrap-up. Small-group rotations include individualized instruction using an adaptive computer application, small-group instruction with a teacher, and independent reading. READ 180® is designed for students in elementary through high school.”

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HMH describes System 44 as: “System 44’s instructional model is holistic, providing everything students and teachers need for simple, clear instruction and classroom engagement, including digital tools, real-time data, implementation support, and professional learning. The System 44 Model for Blended Learning combines adaptive technology and teacher-led instruction to help students become proficient readers, writers, speakers, and critical thinkers.[....] The scope and sequence guides students through five strands: The Code, Word Strategies, Sight Words, Success, and Writing, providing differentiated instruction and practice in each.”

*A note on the “balanced literacy term”: Balanced literacy is an ambiguous word, and has no commonly agreed upon definition. However, it is important to distinguish, as many language programs are based on the philosophical movement behind balanced literacy. These programs tend to be inspired by constructivist thinking. They typically emphasize the importance of passage comprehension, instead of word reading and decoding. They often use more incidental and less systematic phonics instruction, include instruction on word strategies such as three cueing, and use leveled readers, as opposed to decodable ones. 

While it is difficult for us to properly identify this program as structured literacy or balanced literacy, as the company website provides very little information regarding the curriculum and neither author has personally used the program. That said, multiple researchers identified the program as “balanced literacy” within their study. Moreover, Read 180 study authors often referenced famous balanced literacy scholars, such as Fountas and Pinnell, within their papers as literacy experts. We reached out for teacher feedback on social media on this program. While some teachers liked the program, others noted that there was not enough phonics instruction, and relied heavily on silent reading. That said, many teachers also indicated that System 44 included more foundational instruction and was better for struggling readers than Read 180. We felt that this program should be best categorized as a balanced literacy program and not a structured literacy program. 
 

What Works ClearingHouse has identified Read 180 as a tier 1 evidence-based program and is rated as strong by Evidence for ESSA. According to the HMH website, Read 180 is the most effective reading program. However, we believe that both What Works ClearingHouse and Evidence for ESSA overweight the importance of study quality and underweight the importance of study results. This leads to endorsements of almost exclusively companies with the highest research budgets, while ignoring the magnitude of the effet found by their studies. In order to properly evaluate the efficacy of Read 180, a peer-reviewed meta-analysis would be ideal, in which all studies of sufficient quality are reviewed and average study results are calculated. To the best of the knowledge of the authors, no such meta-analysis exists, so we conducted our own for the purposes of this review. 

Methodology:

A systematic search was conducted for both Read 180 and System 44, independently by both authors. Searches were conducted on Google, the company website, What Works Clearinghouse, the ERIC database, and the Education Source database. Studies that were not of an experimental nature or did not have control groups, or did not have sufficient reporting to find effect sizes were excluded. In the initial search 89 papers were found. 66 papers were initially excluded, based on abstracts. 3 Additional papers were excluded, upon closer review of the studies. In total 23 studies were included in the analysis. All experimental studies with control groups and sufficient reporting to find effect sizes were included. Both authors independently coded studies and calculated effect sizes to ensure reliability. In the event of a disagreement, both authors came together to discuss to reach consensus. Cohen’s d effect sizes were used for studies with a  sample size above 50. Hedge’s g was used for studies with a sample size below 50. Studies without sufficient sample size reporting were measured using Cohen’s average. Effect sizes were also weighted, according to sample size, by their proportionality to the mean. For the sake of transparency a downloadable excel file with studies, coding, and basic results has been included in the reference section.  

Results: 

A mean effect size of .08 was found for the program, with 95% confidence intervals of [0, .18]. According to Cohen’s Guide effect sizes below .20 are negligible. Therefore the average result of Read 180 appears to be almost statistically non-existent. Indeed, Lombardi 2016 provided 110 hours more of instructional reading time to the treatment group than the control group and still showed a negative effect size of .39. Similarly as did 3 other studies show negative effect sizes, including the only experimental study on System 44. That said, not all of these studies had equivalent sample sizes or levels of quality. So the analysis was re-conducted to be weighted according to sample size and a regression analysis was conducted to control for quality. The weighted analysis showed slightly more favorable results with a mean effect size of .15, with 95% confidence intervals of [.03, .26]. However, these results were still negligible. Across both analyses, only 2 effect sizes were non-negligible, the unweighted mean for comprehension, and the weighted mean for longitudinal studies. Comparatively, negative effect sizes were found for 5 outcomes. Within the regression analysis, the 12 highest-quality studies showed no meaningful benefit. Of the 23 examined studies, only 4 studies showed a non-negligible positive mean effect size.

What Works Clearing House and Evidence for ESSA both rated Read 180, as having strong evidence of efficacy. However, these organizations primarily evaluate efficacy based on the quality of the studies. And with 22 high quality studies, Read 180 might be the most well-studied language program in the world. However, almost all of those 22 studies showed poor results. Which actually makes us more confident in saying that Read 180 shows little evidence of benefit. This meta-analysis might also be one of the largest syntheses of high-quality balanced literacy studies, as to the best of our knowledge there currently exist no peer-reviewed meta-analyses on the topic of balanced literacy. Despite all of this research, this analysis suggests there is little to no meaningful benefit for Read 180, or System 44. These results further call into question the potential benefits of a balanced literacy approach to reading instruction, especially within an intervention setting.