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Mounting evidence continues to document an achievement gap between students. The gap is evident as early as kindergarten on measures of letter recognition and letter-sound relationships, between European Americans (Whites) and African Americans, and between Whites and Hispanic children (West, Denton & Reaney, 2000). A similar gap is also found along economic lines (West, Denton & Germino Hausken 2000 in Denton, West & Walston, 2003; Zill & West, 2000).

Early intervention, in the form of one-to-one tutoring, has proven to be effective in accelerating the progress of the lowest performing children in first grade to reach average levels of performance (Pinnell, Lyons, DeFord, Bryk & Seltzer, 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 2002). In addition, findings from recent research on one intervention in particular, Reading Recovery, shows that the achievement gap between average and low performing groups either narrowed or closed along economic and race/ethnicity lines (Rodgers, E., Gómez-Bellengé, FX & Wang, C., 2004). We do not know, however, whether the intervention itself was a factor in the students’ progress towards closing the achievement gap. The purpose of this study therefore is to examine whether having an early literacy intervention or not, in this case Reading Recovery, is a significant predictor of a student’s reading achievement in spring. The findings should add to our understandings of how the achievement gap might be impacted by intervening early when students first encounter difficulty with literacy learning.