The Literacy Trust, Inc. 

•  Reading Rescue training, delivered on site to schools and districts for over ten years, equips teachers, assistants, and paraprofessionals to provide tutoring that accelerates the lowest performers in 1st and 2rd grade to grade level reading achievement in a single semester.

•  All children taught by Rescue-trained staff benefit from  improved teaching as a result of their instructors' participation in professional development that provides a clinical experience in reading. The combination of training plus supervised tutoring that Reading Rescue provides, rarely found outside of universities, significantly enhances pedagogical knowledge and skills.
  

• When a reading program claims to be "research-based" it may only mean that it includes strategies demonstrated to be effective. But, Reading Rescue actually has independent, scientific research documenting that its staff development results in grade level achievement among the lowest performers. Such outcomes have been documented in some of the nation's most challenged inner city schools serving predominantly bilingual students; results from high-poverty rural schools are equally impressive.
  

• Every school needs a cadre of highly skilled staff who can succeed with the most-difficult-to-teach students. Tutoring provided by Rescue-trained paraprofessionals and teaching assistants has proven effective and is far less costly than tutoring provided by certified teachers.
  

Clinical training that builds a school's capacity for intensive intervention and improved overall instruction

     Reading Rescue® is both a staff development program and an intensive early intervention that, while it specifically targets students who need one-on-one instruction to reach grade level reading, also builds a school's capacity to teach all students more effectively by equipping a cohort of staff with the knowledge and skills usually associated with reading clinicians. 

• identify those students who are likely to fail to learn to read well in a small group

• target a cohort of low performing students for one-on-one tutoring in the fall semester and a second cohort for tutoring in the spring

• administer and interpret a battery of nine assessments of emergent literacy as well as assessments of sight word knowledge, oral reading and comprehension

• develop phonological awareness in non-readers and struggling readers

• use a multisensory approach to systematically and explicitly teach phonics for use in decoding and encoding

• develop vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension using research-based strategies

• monitor students' progress

• make adjustments within Reading Rescue's structured lesson to meet the needs of individual students

What school principals, noted researchers and the program developer say about Reading Rescue....

"Reading Rescue has provided my paraprofessionals with a sense of professionalism and with tools to assist our most at-risk students.  It has also given our lowest performers and their families the confidence to know that success in reading in achievable."                          Anissa Chalmers, Principal, Bronx, New York, NY

"From these findings we conclude that paraprofessionals tutored as effectively as the credentialed teachers. Moreover, they tutored as well as the reading specialists in strengthening students’ word reading and text comprehension skills..."

Ehri, L.. Dreyer, L.,Flugman,B. and Gross, A. Alan. (2007) Reading Rescue: An effective tutoring intervention model for first-grade struggling readers. American Educational Research Journal, 44,414-448.

 "Reading Rescue trained teachers in the Ehri, et al, study required on average only 44 daily, half hour sessions to accelerate low performers -  90%  of whom were language minority students - to grade level. Paraprofessionals required only 55 sessions. Rapid progress is the norm. Tutors are trained to accelerate literacy development by focusing closely on the student in order to discover not just what the child knows and can do, but what stands in the way of his or her progress. The tutor continually examines the instruction s/he is providing to determine which lesson component may need more emphasis, what aspects of the instruction can be improved, and how time can best be allocated to maximize a student's growth. The tutor's  ability to evaluate the child, to examine on his or her own practice, and differentiate instruction accordingly are knowledge based pedagogical skills developed over the three years of a Reading Rescue adoption that enable a  tutor to provide skilled reading instruction whether one-on-one or in groups for years to come." 

Nora L. Hoover, Ed.D.

Reading Rescue

Program Developer

     Visit Recommenations Page to read testimonials and recommendations from principals.