February 2003

For three years running, Richmond-area first and second graders enrolled in an innovative tutoring effort dramatically improved their reading skills. The vast majority of kids - 88 percent - enrolled in the third year of the in-school program known as ARCH improved their reading skills by one or more grade levels. What's more, 62 percent of students in the program achieved grade-level reading skills, although all had entered it reading below grade level.

These results mirror those of the first two years of ARCH, which stands for America Reads: Richmond Chesterfield Henrico (the City of Richmond and adjacent counties). ARCH is a collaborative effort of Youth Matters, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), other local universities, community based organizations, the local business sector and the school districts.

Youth Matters adopted ARCH, created by VCU, as one of its key strategies to have 80 percent of area third graders reading at grade level by 2006. Youth Matters is an initiative of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce. Before implementing the strategy region wide, the business leaders that make up its board asked Youth Matters and its partners to do one thing in particular: Prove it. That proof is in. In each of three years of implementation, 576 children in 16 schools have shown marked improvements in reading.

Because of these results, ARCH and the best practice tutoring methods it involves are on their way to becoming institutionalized in the area school systems.

For example, Youth Matters had provided funds to match the AmeriCorps contribution; most ARCH tutors are trained AmeriCorps members. Now, the public schools are providing the necessary local match, a sure sign of their commitment to the project.

Virginia's Governor Mark Warner has also taken note of ARCH's success. Last year Governor Warner initiated the Partnership for Achieving Successful Schools, or PASS, to assist 117 academically warned schools with a comprehensive plan to marshal community and business support. PASS will employ four different intervention models to assist these schools; management of the intervention models in Richmond schools is based on the management system developed for ARCH.

Based on its success, Youth Matters is shifting its role with regard to in-school tutoring. Youth Matters had been the facilitator for ARCH. It developed relationships with schools and teachers, and ran interference with the school systems. "We're working with VCU, which will take on the intermediary role we used to have," says Lisa Specter, deputy director for Youth matters. "Our goal was to prove that something could work, and we did that in three different school jurisdictions.

"Youth Matters' current role is advocating for the establishment of research-based programs and evaluation processes for all external school reading programs," Specter says.

Specter says there are certain best practices, which are hallmarks of the ARCH model, that Youth Matters is particularly interested in promoting. One of those is the concept of matching the intervention with the needs of the individual student. For example, ARCH provides one-on-one tutoring, so the student receives help geared to his or her current skill level. Also, research shows that students with the very lowest reading skills need the help of a professional teacher, and would not do as well with a trained ARCH tutor.

Specter said having an at-school coordinator is another key to the success of a tutoring program. Teachers and principals have great difficulty adding the responsibilities of coordinating such an effort, especially the gathering of data, to their already full plates. (For additional information about the general characteristics of successful tutoring problems, visit Youth Matters' website by clicking here.)

"When schools select a tutoring program, and when the community invests time and money in them, we want everyone to ask, 'does it meet the test of best practices?'" says Specter. "Are schools able to collect data? Do they have the resources to implement it? If not, should we be doing it?

"Youth Matters will continue to focus on having schools adopt, and communities invest in, best practices in reading remediation, as well as on our other strategies to get children to school ready to learn and to incorporate reading into out of school activities" she says. We're working to provide school-aged children with what they need to be successful."

For more information on this website about Youth Matters, click here. For more articles on this website on reading by third grade strategies, click here.