Educational reinforcement measures in literacy: the case of the Dyslexia Aid program in the Comunidad de Madrid

Abstract

In this article, we evaluate the Dyslexia Aid program of the Community of Madrid in the 2018-
2019 academic year, aimed at primary school students with reading and writing difficulties. The
program consists of two tools: a) a test to check students who have literacy difficulties and b) up
to 42,000 exercises on a digital platform to work and reinforce these skills. 7.55 % (n = 1,022) of
the students had reading and writing difficulties. The results of the analysis show that there is no
correlation between the participation of the school in the program and the performance of the
students at these schools in the external and standardized tests of Mathematics and Language, but
there is in the case of English. When disaggregating the results by gender, a strong and positive
association of the Dyslexia Help project is observed for girls in Language arts and English (and,
as one might expect, not so much in Mathematics), while for boys it is only significant in English.
However, schools that participate in this intervention have better results and students from a
higher socio-economic background. The different characteristics of the schools could explain
their participation, which was voluntary, in the Dyslexia Aid program. The future line of research
proposes to exploit through a differences-in-differences analysis that there has been a new call
for the program in the 2021-2022 academic year, in which new schools have been incorporated.

Keywords:

remedial education, dyslexia, public programmes, education

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