A comparison of tutored students with nontutored students in reading achievement

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative effectiveness of tutoring on reading achievement of two groups of inner-city disadvantaged children--those third graders who were tutored and those fifth graders who did the tutoring. This study required review of pertinent research and literature related to five different aspects of the problem. (1) There has been extensive interest in, and study of, the use of paraprofessionals and tutors. (2) There has been a recent thrust for the improvement in the reading ability of disadvantaged learners. (3) There has been emerging an increased interest in learning theories as educators search for an answer to the problem of producing a literate population. (4) There has been an emphasis on a search for a way to meet the needs of disadvantaged learners to improve their achievement and self image. (5) There has been an indication of probable effectiveness in learning through the use of motivation and reinforcement provided in educational games. Important facets of this research were planning, organizing, administering, supervising, controlling, and collecting data. There were approximately a total population of 15,000 inner-city disadvantaged children in the summer school program. The tutorial program included one teacher in each school who supervised high school students and the tutoring teams of fifth and third graders. The high school coordinators made games to be used by the fifth grade tutors. One fifth grader tutored the same three third graders daily on a one-to-one basis. Third grade teachers conferred regularly with the supervising teacher about the reading games to be used in practicing skills for each student dependent upon his needs. Twelve schools were randomly assigned to each of the two groups, the control and experimental. At the completion of summer school, three schools were randomly selected from each group. Thirty-six third graders and thirty-six fifth graders in each of the two groups were randomly selected to test the null-hypotheses. An analysis of variance for the hierarchial design was used to analyze the data. Description of the data included grade equivalents, standard deviations, and means. [...]