Chicago schools recently reported a significant improvement in student performance on state tests. They reported an increase from 36 percent to 62 percent for students passing the state test. Admittedly the tests had changed, scoring had been eased up, and students were given an extra 10 minutes to complete the exams. Nonetheless, the gains were substantial enough to believe something had changed to improve student learning. Some of the credit has been given to early childhood programs and to after-school tutoring.

We should never underestimate the power of one-on-one tutoring with struggling readers. In fact, the Department of Education regards the benefits of one-on-one tutoring as one of two gold standards in empirical research findings. The other was reduced class size. When you consider the massive volumes of research on reading performed over the years, you have to figure that citing the benefits of tutoring as one of two gold standards, makes a strong case for including tutoring in your reading intervention program.

Our belief in the value of tutoring led us to create Reading-Tutors.com. We recognize that the tutoring experience is even more valuable when a tutor has developmentally appropriate materials to use during the tutoring session and a simple lesson to follow. Reading-Tutors materials include a book that a child can take away from the tutoring session and use for further practice. Reading-Tutors.com provides downloadable resource packets that include a book, lesson, worksheet, and a game for a tutor to use during a tutoring session. You can get free packets to try at Reading-Tutors.com.

As I walked the exhibit floor and attended sessions at this year’s IRA conference in Chicago, it became pretty obvious that differentiated instruction is one of the hottest buzzwords in education these days. There is no doubt that classroom diversity has increased significantly since my teaching days. I remember having one or two second-language learners in my classes. But today, in the typical classroom, these numbers are significantly higher. Someone recently told me about a district outside Washington, D.C., that has students from 149 language backgrounds! That is a staggering number. Without question, this places a much greater burden on the classroom teacher. To address the diverse needs of their students, teachers need a much wider array of resources than ever before, yet I constantly hear of cuts in spending for instructional materials.

Making a comprehensive collection of developmentally appropriate resources available to teachers at a low cost was the motivating force behind our creation of Reading A-Z and the other websites that we have created. I am often amazed at the rate at which we have added resources since launching the Reading A-Z website in 2002. We started with slightly over 200 English language books. Now we have more than 2,000 books in English, Spanish, and French along with thousands of other reading resources. We keep adding new resources each month, and you can get access to all this stuff for less than $50 a year.

Over the years, I have read numerous reports about how much worse boys are doing in school than girls. Having been a boy, I have always felt kind of lousy about this news. Now, according to a Washington-based think tank, after analyzing results from 30 years of National Association of Educational Progress tests, scores for boys are up, and the gap between girls and boys has narrowed. I have a married daughter with four young boys and no girls, so I was relieved to learn they may not grow up inferior to their female counterparts.

The greatest gains in reading were among 9-year-old boys, who gained 15 points on a 500 point scale between 1971 and 2004, while girls gained seven points. At the high school level, however, the gaps between boys and girls did not narrow, but rather girls gained a point in reading, while boys were down a point. Overall, boys are only 14 points behind girls in reading scores now. The report was quick to state that some groups of boys, particularly Hispanic and African American males from low-income families, remain in serious trouble. As with every study, there is controversy over the interpretation of test results, but it does make for interesting discussion.

I don’t know about you, but with the constant barrage of bad news coming out of Iraq, when I read something with a positive overtone, I latch onto it. The New York Times recently reported that despite all the death and destruction in Iraq, school enrollment is on the rise. The increases are greatest in secondary schools where the enrollment, according to the Ministry of Education, rose from 1.1 million in 2002 to 1.4 million in 2005. I find this bit of news uplifting since history has shown that an educated population is one of the cornerstones of freedom. So while I was surprised to learn this news, I was certainly encouraged by it. I often think of how great it would be to offer Reading A-Z books in Arabic and make them available for Iraq’s teachers to download. Having suitable resources must be a problem for Iraqi teachers.

An associate recently shared that more than 75,000 blogs are created daily, and followed with “we ought to have one, too.” She suggested we call it Bob’s Blog. My first reply was, "Bob’s Blog... are you nuts?" But with a quick retort she said, “But you travel to conferences, constantly read about educational issues, you’ve taught school, been in publishing since the age of the dinosaurs, and you co-founded this company. You’ve got a lot to share.”

That's how this blog began so now we plan to share interesting educational morsels related to reading and other aspects of education. We hope you will find our blog informative and interesting. We invite you to email us any comments or anecdotes you think may be worthy of posting. Happy blogging!