UF Wants To Know: Can Just Anyone Teach A Child To Read?

March 10, 1998

GAINESVILLE — University of Florida researchers want to know if just anyone can teach a child to read or if it takes special training, and while they don’t have a definite answer yet they already know one thing: Every little bit of tutoring helps — and in some cases, dramatically.

Jennifer Tragash, coordinator of UF’s America Reads Challenge program, said UF in September began researching the effectiveness of training reading tutors in teaching techniques and the effect it would have on children’s reading test scores.

“Without fail, the reading rate increases whether the tutors are trained or untrained,” Tragash said.

UF used a portion of $150,000 available in federal work-study money to hire 47 college students and study their tutoring abilities. The Alachua County School District chose children from four Gainesville-area Title I elementary schools: Idylwild, Foster, Glen Springs and Prairie View. P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School also participates in the program.

The university split the tutors into two groups. The first, known as the school-based training group, received no formal instruction at the start of the program. The second, the university-based training group, received 20 hours of instruction in techniques such as how to teach phonics, comprehension and fluency.

To establish their reading level, the children were tested before any tutoring began, then spent eight to 15 hours a week with the tutors. The children were retested four months later to monitor their progress.

Initial test results in January showed reading rates increased in all of the scores,

Tragash said. For some students, she said, the number of words they were able to read per minute doubled. One student went from correctly reading 15 words a minute to 35 words a minute.

The question still to be answered: Will there be a dramatic enough increase in the test scores of the students who were helped by trained tutors to warrant continued training?

Tragash said the results should be in at the end of the spring semester and may allow UF’s program to affect the structure of the national America Reads program.

Alachua County’s program targets children, kindergarten through third grade, who have difficulty reading. Many come from low socio-economic backgrounds and tend to be at a higher risk for reading difficulties, said Tragash. She said the students are not in special education, but “are falling between the cracks.”

Pam Tiefenbach, a curriculum resource teacher at Idylwild Elementary, said the training has made the program successful. “It’s so much easier when the students have some tricks in their pockets,” she said. “They’ve been over the basics.”

Tiefenbach said the training is especially beneficial to the college students who are not education majors. She has seen her students’ test scores and self-esteem rise.

In 1994, the National Assessment of Educational Progress estimated that 40 percent of America’s fourth-graders were reading below the basic level.

“If a child is not reading by third grade, they probably won’t ever read independently as an adult,” Tiefenbach said. “They are more likely to go to jail and more likely to drop out of school if they are not reading by third grade.”

She said the parents of at-risk children usually don’t have the skills to participate in literacy-based activities with their kids, while high-income families usually have two parents working who don’t always have the time to read to their children.

Tragash said tutors provide the one-on-one instruction vital to an education that may be lacking in schools and at home.

“We are tutoring over 150 kids and making progress,” Tragash said.