Both of the local tutoring programs studied in Special Strategies used an amalgam of tutoring approaches during the studys three years of field work. METRA was one component of larger, locally developed tutoring programs. Therefore, although METRA is a commercial product, it is described here.
METRA is a highly structured reading tutorial program that has been found to produce significant gains in achievement (Levin, Glass, & Meister, 1984). METRA can be implemented either in a cross-age peer tutoring format, or as a paraprofessionally delivered program. In its typical implementation, METRA is a relatively low-cost program.
Locally developed, targeted programs included a cross-age and same-age peer tutoring program that was examined as a companion to METRA. Over time, the schools chose to incorporate several components of METRA into their scheme.
The logic of extended-day and extended-year programs is straightforward: if students arent able to progress at the rate of their peers, provide them with more, perhaps varied, instructional activities during extended-time periods. It is often argued that American students dont perform as well on international comparative studies because students in the U.S. go to school for fewer hours per day and fewer days per year than students in other first-world countries. In the Special Strategies studies, both an after-school program for Chapter1 students and a summer school for migrant students were examined. The latter served both migrating and "settled out" migrant students.
