One-on-one Tutoring for Reading

This policy brief tells the story of Reading Partners, a successful one-on-one volunteer tutoring program that serves struggling readers in low-income elementary schools and that has already been taken to a large scale. This policy brief summarizes the early results of that evaluation, which was conducted during the 2012-2013 school year in 19 schools in three states, and which involved 1,265 students. The evaluation finds positive impacts of the program on three different measures of reading proficiency. These encouraging results demonstrate that Reading Partners, when delivered on a large scale and implemented with fidelity, can be an effective tool for improving reading proficiency.

Jacob, R. T., Smith, T. J., Willard, J., & Rifkin, R. E. (2014). Reading partners: The implementation and effectiveness of a one-on-one tutoring program delivered by community volunteers. New York City, NY & Oakland, CA: MDRC. https://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/Reading%20Partners_final.pdf