The developmental progress among students in the ELI program is gauged according to five reading competency levels.

• Stage 0: Pretends to Read
• Stage 1: Approximates and Uses Some Strategies
• Stage 2: Reads Repetitive Text
• Stage 3: Reads Simple Stories and Corrects for Sense
• Stage 4: Consistently Uses Strategies to Process Text
• Stage 5: Fluent Reader Who is Balanced in Strategies and Cross-Checks

With ELI tutoring, students progress from a low level of print awareness (approximating print and pretending to read) to using strategies of effective readers at the average or above-average reading level in twelve weeks (sixty days). Growth in writing progresses from an ability to write only letters and a few words to writing a paragraph and simple stories. As part of the ELI program, districts collect and record data, which is charted at the end of each year. The figure below helps to demonstrate the consistent, dramatic growth in both reading and writing among students who participated from different schools: Morongo Unified School District, 1991 (M), National School District, 1993-94 (N), Ramona Unified School District, 1991 (R), and Cajon Union School District, 1995-1996 (C).

ELI Student Performance Compared with First-Grade Peers

Teachers were asked to compare ELI students with other students in their classrooms at the end of the first- or second-grade year. The comparison-characteristic of districts tutoring in ELI-indicates the consistent results of the ELI program. These results are based on teacher evaluations from Marshalltown Community Schools, 1994-96 (MC) and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District 1995 (LM). The performance of the previously at-risk students who received ELI tutoring has clearly been raised to average-level reading.

These results can be contrasted to the students who were also determined to be at risk but did not receive the same tutoring (shown in the left graph of the above figure). The disparity between the two groups is pronounced: In one independent study of students, it was determined that among at-risk students 75 percent of students with no ELI tutoring were considered below-average readers. Only 10 percent of ELI students were low average.