The effects of theoretically different instruction and student characteristics on the skills of struggling readers

Randomised, at-risk first graders, six Texas schools: a systematic programme with a fixed scope and sequence beat an equally intensive programme that taught phonics explicitly but without a planned order on decoding (WJ-III Word Attack, difference 6.88 W-score points, p < .05); word identification and comprehension did not differ. Kill-condition test survived 2026-10-20.