Each school year, teachers recommend close to 1,000 students who lack on-level reading and math proficiencies to be individually tutored through VIPS’ EveryBody Reads and EveryOne Counts programs. These pre-k through third-grade students, if left without intervention, have a higher risk of dropping out of school.
The National Research Council asserts that “academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of third grade. A person who is not at least a modestly skilled reader by that time is unlikely to graduate from high school.”
A recent analysis of EveryBody Reads data collected for the 2017-2018 school year concluded that students who received 10 or more visits from a Reading Friend saw an increase in reading test scores 13.4 percent points higher than peers who did not receive tutoring.
Receiving at least 10 visits with a VIPS tutor is associated with a significant increase in test scores, with the greatest improvement gained after receiving between 16 and 20 visits. Although, it is acknowledged that other factors played a role in this increase, this is still an encouraging result as it suggests that these tutored students are “catching up” to the test scores of their peers.