Intervention(s)
The Intervention: The study design is a randomized control trial (RCT) that compares the reading proficiency outcomes of students who receive Chapter One’s 1:1 tutoring support from a certified teacher Early Learning Interventionists (“ELIs”) to students who receive tutoring support from a non-teacher ELIs. Chapter One’s certified teacher ELIs undergo rigorous training program on phonics and literacy instruction.
The tutoring began in August 2022 in 7 schools and 54 kindergarten, first, and second grade classrooms that constitute the study sites. As part of the tutoring program, Chapter One’s Reading Foundation Stage (RFS) and Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) assessments are administered by ELIs at the beginning, middle, and end of school year to all 1,129 tutored students in the participating classrooms. Approximately half of the students in each classroom are randomly assigned to receive tutoring from a certified teacher ELIs (treatment group, N=583) and approximately half of the students were assigned to receive tutoring from a non-teacher ELIs (control group, N=546).
The RCT is undertaken to determine the effects, if any, of tutoring by certified teacher ELIs compared to non-teacher ELIs on students’ reading proficiency. Two hypotheses will be tested,
(1) Null hypothesis: Students reading proficiency on assessments is equal between the two groups, one tutored by certified teacher ELIs and one tutored by non-teacher ELIs.
(2) Alternative Hypothesis: Students that receive tutoring by certified teacher ELIs will make greater gains on reading proficiency assessments than students tutored by non-teacher ELIs.
Random assignment to treatment and control groups will create baseline equivalence of the two groups or no systematic differences at baseline, thereby reducing bias. To strengthen internal validity, members of the two groups will be similar in age, grade level, enrollment in classrooms, and performance level in literacy.
Research Question: The general purpose of the research is to determine the effects, if any, of tutoring by certified teacher ELIs vs. non-teacher ELIs on students’ reading proficiency. Thus, this RCT study aims to address the following research question: What is the effect, if any, of tutoring by certified teacher ELIs compared to non-teacher ELIs on students reading proficiency?
Randomization: To assign students to one of the experimental conditions, we will employ a student-level randomized control trial design. Specifically, within each classroom (N=54), we randomly assigned half of the students to the treatment group (received tutoring support from a certified teacher ELIs) and half of the students to the control group (received tutoring support from a non-teacher ELIs). The total randomization sample consist of 1129 students enrolled in kindergarten, first, and second grade classrooms: 583 students in the treated group and 546 students in the control group.