Four-Year College Reading Improvement Programs and Grades: An Annotated Review, 1945–1971

Four-year college reading program outcome studies which were reported in the literature from 1945 through 1971 were annotated. Only reports of programs which emphasized reading improvement and used grade point average as a criterion were included. Community college programs and compensatory programs were not included. Studies were identified on the basis of type of training, testing, and statistical procedure used in measuring change in pre- and posttest scores. Although 23 of the 31 studies found that statistically significant gain in grade-point average was associated with participation in a reading program, grade gains tended to be practically small. It was recommended that grades be viewed as only one of the important factors in evaluating reading programs.