Five Years of READ 180 in Des Moines: Improving Literacy Among Middle School and High School Special Education Students

Over the first five years of implementation, more than 1,200 special education students have participated in Scholastic READ 180 in the Des Moines Independent Community School District. During this period, district personnel have produced annual reports on student outcomes and they have collected evidence that indicates that the program has been implemented reasonably well across the district. This report builds on the school district’s reports and provides additional analyses that take advantage of the full complement of five-year longitudinal data. Analyzing the data as a longitudinal data set, rather than sequentially as a series of yearly data sets, offers an opportunity to investigate and identify growth in student learning outcomes over time.