Reading Recovery:
How Much Does It Cost?
Christy Wall Harrelson
Dr. G. Geer
EDAD 684: School Finance-Ethics
Spring 2011
What is Reading Recovery?
• Early intervention for struggling emerging readers
(the bottom 20% of the first grade class)
• For first grade students only
• One-on-one
• Provided by a trained, highly-certified teacher
• 12-20 weeks of instruction and intervention
• 30 minutes of daily instruction
• Supplements rather than replaces
classroom reading instruction (in
ADDITION TO what students are
already receiving, not in place of)
• Data-driven
A typical Reading Recovery
lesson consists of…
• Familiar re-reads (reading familiar books for fluency
and comprehension)
• Reading the book from the previous
day’s lesson to complete a running
record (data collection)
• Working with magnetic letters and
words (sound and spelling patterns)
• Writing a story
• Putting together a cut-up story
(structured language)
• Introducing and reading a new book
Vision and Goals:
Why Reading Recovery?
“The goal of Reading Recovery is to
dramatically reduce the number of
first-grade students who have
extreme difficulty learning to read
and write and to reduce the cost of
these learners to educational
systems.”
-Reading Recovery: Basic Facts
www.readingrecovery.org
What does this have to do with us?
• We want the most bang for our buck.
• Reading Recovery produces consistent results in a short amount of time
(81% of students graduating from the program in South Carolina in the
2009-2010 school year reached or surpassed grade level performance).
• Early interventions help prevent the effects of low performance such
as…
– truancy,
– continued poor performance,
– increases in the number of students labeled with learning
disabilities,
– increases in the needs for special support staff to address learning
difficulties later on,
– increases in drop-out rates,
– “reduced employment opportunities” (from
www.readingrecovery.org),
– and involvement in criminal behavior.
So…how much does it
cost?
Let’s compare…
A cost comparison example:
Calculations for estimated annual per-pupil cost based
on a teacher salary and benefits of $60,000 annually.
INTERVENTION
ANNUAL PERPUPIL COST
AVERAGE TIME IN
PROGRAM
PER-PUPIL COST
ACROSS TIME
Retention
$9,200
1 year
$9,200
Title I
$2,400
5 years
$12,000
Special Ed.
$3,750
5 years
$18,750
Other (eg. Small
group pull-out)
$2,400
3 years
$7,200
Reading Recovery
$3,750
12-20 weeks
$3,750
- From “Reading Recovery Is Cost Effective”
www.readingrecovery.org
Costs are based on…
• Average teacher salary (found on state report
cards)
• Adjusted teacher cost (fringe benefits)
• Annual spending per pupil (state report cards)
• Pupil-teacher ratio (state report cards)
• Number of Reading Recovery Full-time Equivalent
(FTE) teachers (1 FTE equals 8 slots)
• Number of students served per FTE (number of
FTE’s in the district divided by the total number of
students served)
• Cost per student served
Formula for determining cost per pupil is as follows…
Step 1: Calculate the Adjusted Teacher Salary/Cost
Average teacher salary x 1.3 (allocated for fringe
benefits)
Step 2: Determine the Number of FTE’s (full-time
equivalent teachers) for Reading Recovery
Total Number of RR Slots / 8 (number of slots taught by
an FTE teacher)
Step 3: Determine the Number of RR Students Served per
FTE
Number of Students Served / Number of FTE’s
Step 4: Determine Reading Recovery per Pupil Cost
Adjusted Teacher Salary / Number of RR Students Served
per FTE
In Horry County, for example,…
(Information based on the 2009-2010 District Report Card)
Average teacher salary-$50,257.00
Step 1: Adjusted teacher cost (salary)-$65,334.10
($50,257.00 x 1.3, with 1.3 accounting for fringe benefits)
Step 2: Number of FTE’s for Reading Recovery-15
(120 / 8)
Step 3: Number of Students Served per FTE-14
(210 / 15)
Step 4: Cost per Reading Recovery Pupil-
$4,355.61
How does this compare for Horry County?
Cost Comparison for Horry County:
Calculations for estimated annual per-pupil
cost based on a teacher salary and benefits
of $50,257 annually.
Intervention
Retention
Annual PerPupil Cost
$10,122
Title I
Average Time in
Program
1 year
Per-Pupil Cost
Across Time
$10,122
($ spent per pupil)
3 years
Special Ed.
$3,170
5 years
$15,850
Reading Recovery
$4,355.61
12-20 weeks
$4,355.61
(less than 1 year)
Training/Start Up Costs
The following costs are incurred by the district choosing
to implement the Reading Recovery program. The
costs apply to each teacher trained to provide Reading
Recovery instruction.
• Starter set of materials for implementation-$3,000
• Teacher textbooks-$150
• Tuition cost for graduate course required for training$3,500
• Support fee for regional training site-$3,000
• Continuing contract fee-$300 a year/$900 over
expected 3-years of Reading Recovery instruction
TOTAL-$10,550 per teacher trained
And the total is…
For a district like Horry County considering…
• 15 Reading Recovery teachers x $10,550
• 210 students served x $4,355.61
…the total cost of implementing Reading Recovery for
one full year comes roughly to a grand total of…
$1,072,928
That is roughly 4.57 % of the total $234,718,979.00
Horry County spent on instruction last year.
References
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Assad, S. & Condon, M.A. (1996). Demonstrating the cost effectiveness
of reading recovery: Because it makes a difference. Network News:
A Newsletter Published by the Reading Recovery Council of North
America, Winter, 1-3.
Gomez Bellenge, F.X. (2002). Measuring the cost of reading recovery: A
practical approach. Journal of Reading Recovery, Fall, 47-54.
McBride, M. (2010). Computing the cost of reading recovery to your
district. Retrieved from
http://www.clemson.edu/readingrecovery/CostofRR.ppt
Ohio State University Reading Recovery . (2010). Requirements and costs
for the training of reading recovery teachers in ohio. Retrieved
from
http://www.rrosu.org/Becoming/REQUIREMENTS_AND_COSTS_
Amended_Oct_2010.pdf
Reading Recovery Council of North America. (2010). Reading recovery:
A guide for decision makers. Retrieved from
http://www.readingrecovery.org