Volunteer AmeriCorps members of the Minnesota Reading Corps can produce significantly greater increases in student literacy outcomes among Kindergarten, First and Third grade students over one semester of tutoring.

Key Study Findings include:

• Kindergarten, first, and third grade students who received Minnesota Reading Corps tutoring achieved significantly higher literacy assessment scores than students who did not.

Kindergarten students who participated in the program produced more than twice as many correct letters sounds by the end of the first semester than did students in the control condition. In addition, by the end of the first semester, students who received tutoring were able to produce approximately 11% more letter sound segments in nonsense words than students in the control group. In contrast to the findings for Kindergarten and first grade students, the effect of the program was significant, but small for third grade students and not statistically significant for second grade students.

• In Kindergarten and first grade, Minnesota Reading Corps tutoring resulted in statistically significant impacts across multiple racial groups and despite important risk factors.

A statistically significant impact of tutoring was detected among Kindergarten and first grade students despite gender, minority group status, Dual Language Learner (DLL) status, and Free or Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) eligibility. For each of these characteristics, students who received tutoring significantly outperformed control students who did not receive tutoring on grade-specific literacy assessments.

• The Minnesota Reading Corps program is replicable in multiple school settings using AmeriCorps members with varied backgrounds.

Student assessment scores did not vary by AmeriCorps member characteristics nor by the specific school at which the tutoring occurred. These results support the conclusion that the Minnesota Reading Corps program is replicable in multiple school settings using AmeriCorps members with diverse backgrounds. Findings from an earlier process assessment concluded that the program’s approach to training, coaching and supervision, as well as their intentional recruitment of members, many of whom have no formal training or experience in education, is effective.
 

The overall results suggest that the Minnesota Reading Corps program produces the largest effects most quickly with the youngest students, particularly Kindergarten students. In later grades (i.e., second and third), when students begin the more complex task of reading connected text, the program did not produce changes in student oral reading fluency outcomes in the short-term. However, it is possible that the Minnesota Reading Corps program may have a larger effect on third grade students’ oral reading scores, but these improvements take more time to emerge in older students.