Stockard, Jean2023-05-232023-05-232011Stockard. J. (2011). Enhancing Achievement in Rural Schools: A Reply to Eppley. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 26(14). Retrieved from http://jrre.psu.edu/articles/26-14.pdf.https://hdl.handle.net/1794/28316https://jrre.psu.edu/volume/266 pagesReaders of this exchange are urged to read my original manuscript rather than Eppley’s summary of it, for her characterizations bear almost no resemblance to the actual content of the paper. The article is a quantitative analysis of data from over 800 students in three different districts in one rural state. All of the schools had proportionally more students at risk (measured as receipt of free or reduced lunch or minority status) than in the state as a whole. A cohort control group design (Cook & Campbell, 1979) and linear growth models were used to examine variations in growth in reading skills, comparing students with full exposure to Reading Mastery (RM) (defined as having had the curriculum from the beginning of kindergarten) and those with less exposure (beginning in later grades). Results indicated that students with full exposure had significantly higher reading skills, that these differences persisted through the primary grades, and that significant differences also appeared on state reading assessments given in the fourth grade.enCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USquantitative analysisReading Mastery (RM)Direct Instruction (DI)Article