Evaluation of Amazonia lee reading intervention in Peru : final report

We examined impacts on teaching practices and literacy skills of participating students. We randomly assigned schools to a program group that implemented Amazonía Lee or a control group that did not. The study was conducted in two areas (departments) of the Amazon region. In one department, Ucayali, control schools received the usual services provided by the Ministry of Education. In the other department, San Martín, most control schools received a program known as Soporte Pedagógico, a Ministry initiative that offered teacher training and coaching, pedagogical materials, and remedial tutoring. In both regions, we found a few impacts on teacher instructional practices, including teachers’ increased explanation of different types of texts and greater vocabulary development. The impacts on students differed by region. In Ucayali, Amazonía Lee had positive and substantial impacts on reading outcomes. For example, students in Amazonia Lee on average could read one additional familiar word (7 versus 6, an impact equivalent to 0.24 standard deviations), 3.5 additional invented words (16.8 versus 13.4, an impact on decoding of 0.24 standard deviations), and scored higher on a reading comprehension test (impact of 0.27 standard deviations), with no gender differences. In San Martín, where Soporte Pedagógico was prevalent, we found no impacts on students’ reading outcomes relative to the control schools.