Arizona's Cartwright School District Prepares Students for Upper Grades Using Direct Instruction Programs

Cartwright School District, serving over 19,000 students in Maryvale, Arizona, implemented McGraw Hill's Corrective Reading and Corrective Mathematics to support students in grades 3-12. The district, where 90% of students receive free/reduced lunch and 40% are English Language Learners, sought research-validated programs to deliver systematic Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions. The implementation began at the resource-room level and expanded to grades 4 and 5. The district-wide RTI steering committee chose the programs to provide strong remediation in reading and math for older students who were multiple years behind grade level. As a result of the implementation, the district has seen marked improvement in assessment scores. According to an AIMSweb Summary of Impact report, Tier 3 students using the Direct Instruction programs are now scoring in the top quartile over 50 percent of the time.