Participatory Grantmaking: Power to the People

How Effective is This Program For Young Readers?

Giving Compass' Take: • This Social Programs That Work paper analyzes a Portland, Oregon-based volunteer tutoring program for at-risk readers in early elementary school. • Start Making a Reader Today (SMART) showed promise in advancing literacy skills among first-graders at risk of reading failure, but more research will be needed. How might other programs learn from SMART's methodology? • Read more about the literacy tools bringing equity and energy to the classroom. Developed in 1992 in Oregon, Start Making a Reader Today recruits community volunteers to tutor low-performing K-2 students in reading. The program operates statewide, serving approximately 11,000 students in 260 elementary schools each year. The Oregon business community provides significant financial assistance to the program, and many of the volunteer tutors are recruited from the business community. Program: A volunteer tutoring program for at-risk readers in early elementary school. Evaluation Methods: A well-conducted randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a sample of 127 first-graders at risk of reading failure from six elementary schools in a diverse range of communities in Oregon. Key Findings: Sizable positive impacts on students’ reading ability over a two-year follow-up period. Other: Limitations in the evidence include the fact that this was a small RCT conducted in a single state, and the effect on the most important reading measure — comprehension — approached but did not reach statistical significance. A replication RCT in another jurisdiction would be valuable to hopefully confirm these positive findings and establish whether they generalize to other sites. Read the full article on Start Making a Reader Today at Social Programs That Work.