Participants
Districts/Schools
The participants were selected from a sample of kindergarten students in two local school districts. Schools were matched as closely as possible on size, % of economically disadvantaged, % of ELLs, and % of ethnic/minority composition. District A integrates Istation®
into its kindergarten literacy curriculum and requires all teachers to use the
program regularly. The remaining six
classrooms served as a control and were located in three schools within
District B. District B integrates technology regularly into
the kindergarten curriculum; however, the district uses a more traditional
curriculum to directly instruct students in literacy.
Teachers
After meeting with each the six school principals, I asked the principals to provide the names of two kindergarten teachers who would be willing to participate in the study. All students in the kindergarten classrooms of the teachers who volunteered were asked to participate in the study.
Students
One hundred fifty students returned the consent forms for the study. The final analysis included 72 students matched through propensity score matching, with 36 students in each of the treatment and control groups.