This meta-analysis assesses the effectiveness of volunteer tutoring programs for improving the academic skills of students enrolled in public schools Grades K-8 in the United States and further investigates for whom and under what conditions tutoring can be effective. The authors found 21 studies (with 28 different study cohorts in those studies)…

This article systematically reviews research on the achievement outcomes of four types of approaches to improving the beginning reading success of children in kindergarten and first grade: Reading curricula, instructional technology, instructional process programs, and combinations of curricula and instructional process. Study inclusion criteria…

We conducted a meta-analysis of 36 studies of Reading Recovery (RR), an intensive tutorial intervention designed to develop the literacy skills of low-performing first-grade students. Few individual studies of the program have yielded conclusive evidence regarding the program's effectiveness due to various methodological limitations. We relied on…

Social skills training has been recommended as an intervention for students having difficulty establishing meaningful social relationships with peers and teachers in school settings. Several meta-analyses of the relevant literature have shown weak to moderate effects, whereas other syntheses have shown somewhat larger effects. The meta-analyses…

To examine the effects of the language experience approach (LEA) on beginning reading achievement, a study analyzed five projects conducted as part of the United States Office of Education first grade studies and 32 additional studies comparing basal reading approaches to LEA. Using two methods of quantitative synthesis (vote-counting and…

Goal: Educators believe that parents can help their children learn to read. But what evidence supports this belief? And if parent involvement does matter, what kinds of parent involvement are most efficient? The goal of this report was to review the scientific literature on parent involvement in the acquisition of reading from kindergarten to…

The decision by the National Institute of Education panel on the effects of school desegregation to select (for meta-analysis) a small group of preferred studies based upon criteria chosen in advance of examining the studies was, in principle, a mistake. One usually cannot know until the data have been examined which of several competing…