When less may be more: A 2-year longitudinal evaluation of a volunteer tutoring program requiring minimal training

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects on reading achievement of a low-cost, widely implemented volunteer reading program that has been expanding rapidly throughout the state of Oregon. Eighty-four beginning first grade students at risk of reading difficulties were randomly assigned to experimental and comparison groups. Adult volunteers tutored students in the experimental group in 30-minute sessions two times per week in first and second grade, At the end of grades 1 and 2, students were administered a number of standardized reading measures, including measures of individual word reading, reading comprehension, word comprehension, and reading fluency. Analyses revealed that students in the experimental group made greater growth on a word identification measure than students in the comparison condition; they also made more growth than a group of average-achieving students who were from the same classrooms as the students in the experimental and comparison groups. Students in the experimental group also scored higher than students in the comparison condition on measures of reading fluency and word comprehension at the end of second grade. Differences were not statistically significant on passage comprehension. Findings are discussed in the context of the reading achievement effects that other adult volunteer reading programs have attained. Pie suggest that in establishing adult volunteer reading programs it is important to consider how to balance the intensity of training reading volunteers to achieve measurable impact on reading achievement with real world realities of the volunteer tutoring experience and goals for the extensiveness of implementation.