Barton
Limited Evidence of Relative Effectiveness:
Summary: Barton has been studied a handful of times, and was found to have (mostly) positive but non-significant effects, but also performed worse than controls in some measures. In 3 of the 5 studies (60%) Barton had statistically significant, positive effects on at least one reading measure. In one study (20%), Barton students performed worse than controls at one grade level.
The majority of these studies had few students, so it is difficult to draw strong conclusions from this research.
Barton Research
Barton Reading and Spelling System is an OG-based reading and spelling intervention that begins with phonemic awareness, then teaches phonics, decoding, and spelling via a series of rules and morphology. It is a lengthy program, requiring 2-3 years to complete at a dose of 2 hours per week, for a total of about 150-220 intervention hours for the entire program.
The research on the effectiveness of the Barton system comes with mixed results. In a study of 68 Iranian school children, results indicated that the Barton system had statistically significant positive impacts on reading fluency as compared to control groups - this following a pilot study that indicated positive impacts on reading comprehension. Effect sizes were not provided (Azizfar et al 2019, Mihandoost 2011). An earlier study of 18 high school students in Florida also suggested greater gains in decoding, word attack, and spelling measures for Barton students as compared to control groups, though the research questions and data analysis were somewhat unconventional, and therefore difficult to compare to the other studies on this page. The treatment group scored higher in post-testing than controls by 0.46 - 3.6 standard score gains, but only performed significantly better than their pre-test score in Word Attack (i.e. nonsense word reading). The study’s very small size (two groups of 9 students) was noted as an issue (Giess 2005). A fourth study of 21 students found that although students receiving 36 hours of Barton generally had higher scores than those using HMH’s Reading Tool Kit, none reached the level of statistical significance. No effect sizes were calculated in the original study, but a subsequent analysis found them to be medium effect sizes, albeit not statistically significiant (Bisplinghoff 2015, PedagogyNonGrata 2021). A fifth study compared 22 students receiving Barton to those who hadn't on standardized state tests of reading comprehension. There was no statistically significant difference in reading scores between Barton and the controls. Effect sizes were not calculated, but in general, students in Grades 1-2 who received Barton scored worse than controls, while those in Grade 4-6 who did Barton scored better than controls. Grade 3 had mixed results. None of the differences were statistically significant (Gearhart 2017).
Barton lists 15 case studies on its website which provide stories and data in support of its effectiveness. These do offer promising results, and more data than many programs provide consumers with, I might add! However, due to the fact that these case studies were not designed with experimental controls, we unfortunately cannot definitively attribute the reading growth of these studies to the Barton System, (just as we would not attribute an increase in a child’s height during the study to the Barton intervention).
My takeaway? Barton has a solid theoretical base, and some evidence of positive impacts, but also some negative results compared to controls, and with the exception of two international studies, most of this evidence was not found to be statistically significant, so it is difficult to say whether the program itself is what is moving the needle in these cases. The research studies were all quite small. The Barton System can take a long time for students to progress through. Overall, the evidence for its effectiveness is limited. It does not appear to be the most effective of the phonics interventions that have been researched, and is certainly not the most time-efficient of the programs available.
Similar Programs: Logic of English, All About Reading, Sonday
Research Studies:
Azizifar, A., Salamati, M., Mohamadian, F., Veisani, Y., Cheraghi, F., Alirahmi, M., & Aibod, S. (2019). The effectiveness of an intervention program-barton intervention program-on reading fluency of Iranian students with dyslexia. Journal of education and health promotion, 8(1), 167. Google Scholar
Bisplinghoff, S. E. (2015). The effectiveness of an orton-gillingham-stillman-influenced approach to reading intervention for low achieving first-grade students (Doctoral dissertation, Florida Gulf Coast University). Google Scholar
Gearhart, S. L. (2017). Reading Comprehension through Incidental Learning: Efficacy of an After-School Literacy Program Utilizing the Barton Reading & Spelling System®. Thesis. Arkansas State University. AState (pdf) | Google Scholar
Giess, S. (2005). Effectiveness of a multisensory, Orton-Gillingham-influenced approach to reading intervention for high school students with reading disability. Dissertation. University of Florida. Google Scholar
Mihandoost, Z., & Elias, H. (2011). The effectiveness of the Barton’s intervention program on reading comprehension and reading attitude of students with dyslexia. Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 5(2), 43. Google Scholar
Return to the Know Your Options Table of Contents
This Research Summary is a work in progress.
Leave me a comment if you know of other studies that I could include!
No comments:
Post a Comment