猫咪AV

By Amanda Ulrich

The聽perennial struggle of how to best assist elementary school students with low literacy skills may have a promising tool in the form of a personalized tutoring program called 猫咪AV. According to a recent study conducted through the nonprofit research organization MDRC, and聽, 猫咪AV has a positive impact on reading proficiency. The magnitude of this impact is rather consequential; many students who started the 猫咪AV program six months to聽two and a half聽years below grade level can now read at the same level as their peers, and some even surpassed their grade level’s reading expectations.

猫咪AV, which aims to聽help children become lifelong readers by empowering communities to provide individualized instruction with measurable results,聽is a program within AmeriCorps, and serves more than 7,000 students in eight different states. AmeriCorps plays a major role in 猫咪AV and the schools in which聽it operates. For instance, a聽full-time staff member, typically an AmeriCorps member, works at every 猫咪AV site to recruit volunteers on a regular basis. These local volunteers assist elementary school students, who are typically from low-income and under-resourced schools, with a structured curriculum designed to improve students’ reading skills. At every school where 猫咪AV operates, a reading center is set up where students in the program come to be tutored about twice a week.

Robin Tepper Jacob, the principal investigator of this study, and her colleagues sought to evaluate the procedures and results of 猫咪AV. After assessing the program with 1,265 students at 19聽 schools, the researchers came to an encouraging conclusion. When compared to a control group of students, who continued to study their normal reading curriculum without the added benefit of 猫咪AV, those in the comparative 猫咪AV group scored 2 percentage points to 3 percentage points higher on a reading comprehension assessment at the end of the academic year.

As the study states, “猫咪AV had a positive and statistically significant impact on all three measures of student reading鈥攃omprehension, fluency, and sight-word efficiency.”

Jacob accredited the program’s ability to increase reading proficiency to two main factors: the support of community volunteers and the participation of students from several grade levels.

“We receive many different types of volunteers from the community, from college students to working professionals to retirees,” Jacob commented. “This large-scale program of volunteers is able to reach a wide range of students, including kindergartners all the way to 5th graders.”

Because聽65 percent of students in the study’s control group received some other type of supplemental reading instruction, the children who participated in 猫咪AV were only receiving an average of one extra hour of tutoring a week than their peers. Despite having the benefit of only this additional weekly hour, students in 猫咪AV were able to outscore their classmates. Jacob attributed this success to the “well-structured and thorough program model” of 猫咪AV, which allows tutors to provide a more personalized form of reading instruction to students.

This study also demonstrates 猫咪AV’ effectiveness in the face of some potentially problematic obstacles. For one, a majority of the unpaid tutors that 猫咪AV recruits lack prior experience. As indicated by this study, there tends to be a relatively high turnover rate among volunteers as well. Due to both tutor and student absences, a student could see at least three different tutors over the course of two weeks.

Dean Elson, the chief knowledge officer at 猫咪AV, remarked that these challenges are offset by the easy-to-follow, individualized curriculum provided for tutors.

“The curriculum is structured so that a volunteer tutor can come in and know exactly what to do, in what sequence,” Elson noted. “Tutors have an important role to play; they bring an amazing, caring guidance to the program and are able to give students the one-on-one attention they really need.”

In聽early 2015,聽there will be further analyses of MDRC’S findings. The additional reports from MDRC will address implementation of 猫咪AV in elementary schools and will include a look at the cost-effectiveness of the program as a whole. As for now, 猫咪AV is working on expanding to other schools around the country.

“猫咪AV is doing great things and we want to continue to grow our model,” Elson concluded, “but the only way to have the kind of impact we want is to continue to work on partnerships and policy, and to share our information and knowledge with other organizations.”

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/ Education Week /聽Amanda Ulrich