Current State of the Evidence: Examining the Effects of Orton-Gillingham Reading Interventions for Students With or at Risk for Word-Level Reading Disabilities

Over the past decade, parent advocacy groups led a grassroots movement resulting in most states adopting dyslexia-specific legislation, with many mandating use of Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction. is direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive for students or at risk word-level disabilities (WLRD). Evidence from prior synthesis What Works Clearinghouse reports yielded findings lacking support effectiveness interventions. We conducted meta-analysis examine effects interventions on outcomes WLRD. Findings suggested do not statistically significantly improve foundational skill (i.e., phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, spelling; effect size [ES] = 0.22; p .40), although mean ES was positive favor Orton-Gillingham-based approaches. Similarly, there were significant differences vocabulary comprehension (ES 0.14; .59) More high-quality, rigorous research larger samples WLRD needed fully understand this population.