A. Evidence of Effectiveness

In January 2005, Reading, MD obtained funding for a pilot program at City on a Hill Charter Public High School to provide fourteen CoaH 10th graders with 28 hours of individualized literacy tutoring in preparation for the English MCAS exam. The program began on February 3rd and ended on April 14th. Four experienced Lead Tutors and ten Literacy Tutors were hired from Northeastern University, MIT, The Berklee College of Music, and Harvard University. The impact of the tutoring on student reading ability was measured by the “Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation” (GRADE). The GRADE, recognized as “a very useful test of reading ability …well constructed and reflective of a wide variety of emergent literacy and reading skills” by the Buros Institute, was given before the program began and after its completion to fourteen students in the program and sixteen students not in the program. Pre and Post testing showed that the reading growth of students who participated in the two month program averaged .75 of a year, as opposed to .2 of a year growth for students who were not in the program. This success has led City on a Hill and Reading, MD to run similar programs this summer, fall, and spring, and to this joint application whereby we hope to serve students in the Boston public schools.

Prior to its partnership with City on a Hill, Reading, MD provided professional development and guidance to tutors at the MATCH Summer Academy in 2003 and 2004. The professional development was more extensive in the summer of 2003, when Mark Destler was employed as a full-time administrator of the program. It was less extensive in the summer of 2004, when he was employed as a consultant. The extent and success of both programs will be discussed below.

In the summer of 2003, students received forty hours of one-on-one tutoring from their work-study tutors. This tutoring was provided two hours per day Monday through Thursday over the course of five weeks. The impact of the tutoring on student reading ability was measured in two ways: by the “Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation” (GRADE) and by the “Diagnostic Assessment of Reading” (DAR).

The GRADE was given before the program began and after its completion to twelve incoming 9^th graders who were in the program and to twelve incoming 9^th graders who were not in summer academy. While the groups were not selected randomly (the twelve students selected for summer academy were selected because of weakness in reading or math, while the students not selected for summer academy were relatively strong), differences between the pre and post tests of each group were remarkable. Students who received tutoring had an average increase in their reading levels of .9 years. Students who did not receive tutoring had an average decrease in their reading levels of .2 years. In other words, students who received tutoring had an average increase of 1.1 years greater than students who did not receive the tutoring.

The DAR was used primarily as a diagnostic instrument. The Buros Institute considers it to be “valuable to teachers attempting to develop remedial reading programs for individuals and small groups” but not as reliable as the GRADE in measuring student growth. Nevertheless, pre and post tests of the thirty-two students (grades 8-11) who received reading tutoring over the summer provide support for the GRADE results: these students found their word recognition, vocabulary, and comprehension scores to increase a little more than an average of .8 of a year (.82, .80, and .85, respectively) over the five week program.

As noted above, Reading, MD had a smaller level of involvement in the summer 2004 program. In addition, the program itself was less extensive – students received only twenty hours of one-on-one tutoring overall, one hour per day Monday through Thursday over the course of five weeks. Finally, all incoming students received the tutoring, so there is no control group as there was in the summer of 2003. However, the results – students gained on average .55 years in their reading scores as measured by the GRADE – are meaningful in a different way.  From three programs that have offered (respectively) 40, 20, and 28 hours of tutoring), there seems to be a clear connection between the amount of tutoring and its positive effect – roughly a quarter of a year of growth for every ten hours of tutoring. This means that our ability to provide one-on-one services at a considerably lower per-hour rate than our competitors (and hence our ability to provide substantially more hours of tutoring for each students per-pupil allotment) will allow us to outpace our competitors through quantity of tutoring alone. This also compares quite favorably with the rate of growth achieved in a standard classroom, which for comparisons sake we will assume is one year for roughly 180 hours of instruction: it is 4.5 times more effective!

Works Cited

1. Farkas, George (1998). Reading One-to-One: An Intensive Program Serving a Great Many Students While Still Achieving Large Effects. In J. Crane (ed), Social Programs that Work. New York, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 75-109.

2. Test review of the Diagnostic Assessment of Reading. From J. C. Conoley & J. C. Impara (Eds.), The twelfth mental measurements yearbook [Electronic version]. Retrieved July 07, 2003, from the Buros Institute's Test Reviews Online website: http://www.unl.edu/buros