The Project CRISS Professional Development Program in Literacy Shows No Effect on Grade 9 Reading Comprehension

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REL Northwest conducted a randomized controlled trial, An Experimental Study of the Project CRISS Reading Program on Grade 9 Reading Achievement in Rural High Schools, in rural high schools in six states to test the impact of a teacher professional development program in literacy on students’ reading comprehension.

Project CRISS— Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies—aims to help teachers teach students new ways to read and comprehend text, and to apply these literacy strategies across the core curriculum. Teachers received professional development from national trainers, who are themselves teachers with many years of experience using Project CRISS, and ongoing support from a local facilitator who received advanced training during the two-year course of implementation.
In the small rural and town schools where the study was conducted over two years, core subject teachers in the treatment group received 24 hours of formal training plus an additional four to five days of on-site consultation and assistance by a certified Project CRISS trainer. Control schools did not receive Project CRISS and operated in a “business as usual” mode.

This study of Project CRISS included 2,460 students in 23 treatment schools and 2,499 students in 26 control schools.

The study found that the Project CRISS literacy program did not produce significantly greater improvement in grade 9 students’ reading comprehension relative to the students whose teachers did not experience Project CRISS and that reading comprehension did not differ between male and female students.