Kids in the tutor seat: Building schools' capacity to help struggling readers through a cross-age peer-tutoring program

Increasingly, elementary schools across America are adopting prereferral intervention models that follow a structured problem‐solving consultation process to reduce referrals to special education and to improve student academic outcomes. One feasible and affordable systems‐level solution for a school that must deliver reading interventions of high quality to many children is an effective cross‐age peer‐tutoring program. The present study examines the impact of a school‐based peer‐tutoring intervention on the fluency of delayed readers in an urban school district. A peer‐tutoring program was implemented across four elementary schools, with a total of 27 tutors and 27 tutees. Tutors and tutees were monitored weekly using CBM oral reading‐fluency probes, and treatment integrity checks were conducted periodically on all tutor pairs. While both tutors and tutees showed increases in reading fluency during the program, students receiving tutoring made substantially greater gains than did tutors. The article provides guidelines for implementing an effective cross‐age peer‐tutoring program in a range of school settings. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 99–107, 2006.