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The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Program Description
Overview | Begun in 1979, the Howard Street Tutoring Program provides after school remedial reading instruction through one-on-one tutoring to second and third grade children who have fallen behind their peers in reading. The program, which is a joint venture of the Reading Center at the National College of Education in Evanston, Illinois and the Good News Educational Workshop in Chicago, operates in a neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago. |
Start Date | 1979 |
Scope | local |
Type | after school, mentoring |
Location | urban |
Setting | community-based organization, private facility |
Participants | elementary school students in second and third grade |
Number of Sites/Grantees | one site |
Number Served | approximately 20 (1987–1988) |
Components | The Howard Street Tutoring Program operates four days per week from early October to late May from 2:30pm to 4pm. Two groups of approximately 10 second and third graders receive tutoring two afternoons a week—one group on Mondays and Wednesdays, the other group on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Participants are identified by their classroom teachers. Second and third grade teachers at a local low-income urban elementary school identify the lowest performing third of their class in reading and these children are given a comprehensive reading test. The 20 or so lowest performers on the test are invited to participate in the program. Each child is paired with a volunteer reading tutor who works with that child for the duration of the program. The program supervisors, one for each group of 10 students, train the volunteers in appropriate reading instruction techniques and write individualized lesson plans for each student/volunteer pair. By the end of the school year, each student has received approximately 50 hours of one-on-one tutoring. At 2:30pm, the program supervisors escort the children from their public school and walk the group over to the storefront two blocks away where the program is held. The children eat a snack of milk and cookies while listening to a story or playing a game until 3pm. At 3pm, the children are paired with their tutors and engage in the same daily activities: 15–20 minutes of contextual reading at the child's instructional level, 10–12 minutes of word study, 15 minutes of writing, 10–15 minutes of easy contextual reading, and 5–10 minutes of adult reading to the child. The program is over at 4pm and the children return home. |
Funding Level | $6,000 (1987–1988) (the combined salaries of the two supervisors) |
Funding Sources | not available |
Evaluation
Overview | The evaluation was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the Howard Street Tutoring Program during the 1986–1987 and 1987–1988 school years. |
Evaluator | Darrell Morris, Appalachian State University; Beverly Shaw and Jan Perney, National College of Education |
Evaluations Profiled | Helping Low Readers in Grades 2 and 3: An After-School Volunteer Tutoring Program, 1990 |
Evaluations Planned | none |
Report Availability | Morris, D., Shaw, B., & Perney, J. (1990). Helping low readers in grades 2 and 3: An after-school volunteer tutoring program. The Elementary School Journal, 91(2), 133–150. |
Contacts
Evaluation | Darrell Morris, PhD Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 Tel: 828-262-2000 Email: morrisrd@appstate.edu |
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Program | not available | |
Profile Updated | August 13, 2002 |
Evaluation: Helping Low Readers in Grades 2 and 3: An After-School Volunteer Tutoring Program, 1990
Evaluation Description
Evaluation Purpose | To determine the effectiveness of the Howard Street Tutoring Program, particularly in raising participants' reading levels. |
Evaluation Design | Experimental: In late September of 1986 and 1987, two second-grade teachers and two third-grade teachers identified the lowest 50 readers in their classrooms. The identified students were then pretested in word recognition, spelling, and basal passage reading. The children by classroom were then rank ordered from top to bottom, based on their word recognition score. Starting at the bottom of the list for each classroom, children with successive scores were paired. In each pair, one child was randomly assigned to the tutoring program and the second child to the control group, which received no after school tutorial instruction. These pairs of children, one in the treatment and one in the control group, sat next to each other in the public school classroom throughout the school year. In late May of 1987 and 1988, children in both the treatment and control groups were posttested with the same reading and spelling battery. Due to mobility of the student population and the availability of tutors, there were 17 children in the treatment and control groups, respectively, in 1986–1987, and 13 children in each group in 1987–1988. |
Data Collection Methods | Tests/Assessments: Treatment and control group students were both given a pretest and a posttest using the same reading/spelling battery during the school year. The tests covered word recognition, spelling, and basal passage reading. The pre-tests were administered in September of 1986 and 1987 for the two years of intervention, respectively, and the post-tests were administered in late May of 1987 and 1988. |
Data Collection Timeframe | Data were collected from September 1986 to May 1988. |
Findings:
Formative/Process Findings
Activity Implementation | Children were allowed to proceed at their own pace as lesson plans were customized for individual children. |
Costs/Revenues |
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Recruitment/Participation | Most of the children participated for only one of the two intervention years evaluated here, e.g., 1986–1987 or 1987–1988. |
Program-School Linkages |
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Staffing/Training |
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Summative/Outcome Findings
Academic |
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