The NRP interpreted a study by Sandra Holt and Frances O'Tuel as showing no difference between readers and comparisons in reading comprehension.²⁰ This study contained two samples, seventh and eighth graders. According to the text of the article, for the total sample, the readers were significantly better on tests of reading comprehension. The text also states that the difference was statistically significant for the seventh graders but not the eighth graders, a conclusion that is consistent with mean posttest scores presented in the researchers' Table 1 (pretest means were not presented). In their Table 2, however, the difference for reading comprehension for grade 7 was not statistically significant. The effect size for grade 7 (my calculations), based on posttest means, was a substantial .58. The NRP did not mention this discrepancy. I classified the results of this study as a split-decision.

The NRP reported that D. Ray Reutzel and Paul Hollingsworth found no differences between SSR and skills practice.²¹ What the panel did not mention is that the entire treatment lasted only ten days (not one month, as the NRP reports), and that each of four skills groups did intensive work on specific comprehension skills (locating details, drawing conclusions, finding the main idea, finding the sequence). Reutzel and Hollingsworth found no difference among the five groups on tests of comprehension skills and concluded that "engaging in sustained reading of connected and meaningful text appeared to be just as effective as spending time of the learning and practicing of discrete comprehension skills."²²

Additional Evidence

It should also be pointed out that the case for reading does not rest entirely on studies of sustained silent reading. In "read and test" studies subjects show clear gains in vocabulary and spelling after a brief exposure to comprehensible text.²³ It is hard to attribute these gains to anything but reading. There are, in addition, compelling case histories that cannot be easily explained on the basis of competing hypothesis, cases such as Richard Wright, who credits reading with providing him with high levels of literacy development: "I wanted to write and I did not even know the English language. I bought English grammars and found them dull. I felt that I was getting a better sense of the language from novels than from grammars."²⁴ Or consider the case of Ben Carson,²⁵ a neurosurgeon who says that his mother's insistence that he read two books a week (of his own choosing) when he was in the fifth grade was a turning point in his life. Carson credits reading with improving his reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling, and it helped him move from the bottom of his class in grade 5 to the top in grade 7. Yes, I know; there was no control group, no tests were given, and the results were not in a refereed journal. But it is hard to imagine any other source for this obvious improvement, and cases like these are not uncommon.

Conclusions

The NRP concluded that "the handful of experimental studies" in which encouraging voluntary reading have been done, "raise serious questions" about its efficacy.²⁶ There are more than a handful of studies. Moreover, the addition of more studies to the analysis provides substantial evidence in support of the effectiveness of recreational reading.

Note that even a finding of "no difference" between free readers and students in traditional programs suggests that free reading is just as good as traditional instruction, which confirms that free reading does indeed result in literacy growth, an important theoretical and practical point. Because free reading is so much more pleasant than regular instruction (for both students and teachers), and because it provides students with valuable information and insights, a finding of no difference provides strong evidence in favor of free reading in classrooms.

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