Clinton Aims for ‘Army of Reading Tutors’ to Expand Literacy Program

WASHINGTON —  President Clinton said Saturday that 20 college presidents, including the head of San Francisco State University, have agreed to join a program to fight illiteracy by encouraging college students to serve as reading tutors.

“We know that individualized tutoring works,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address, announcing the next step of his “America Reads” initiative, which he said will build “an army of reading tutors on college campuses all across America.”

The new initiative was presented as part of his commitment in his reelection campaign to establish a $2.75-billion literacy program. The college presidents will form a steering committee chaired by Robert Corrigan, president of San Francisco State.

The 20 institutions participating in the work-study literacy program include the 22-campus California State University system. Clinton said he also hopes to add five more members to the group.

Barry Munitz, chancellor of the Cal State system, said Saturday that the program could have an enormous impact on how students fare in the higher-education system.

“The problem we have been having in higher education is that by the time you get to college, it’s too late to catch up or improve fundamental deficiencies that have occurred in the third or fourth grade,” Munitz said in an interview. “Unless you’re willing to reach down early, into the early grades, and into more than how we train teachers, you can never recover.”

The focus of the program will be to recruit students to work as reading tutors as part of Clinton’s proposal to muster 1 million literacy volunteers.

At his urging, Congress recently established more than 200,000 work-study jobs on college campuses. Many are expected to be earmarked for community service, including reading programs.

Clinton said that the 20 institutions have promised that half of their new federally funded work-study positions will be devoted to students who will serve as reading tutors.

Munitz said he hopes the program will reach beyond simply putting tutors or mentors into the early grades and will make use of new technology and seek to improve understanding of how children learn.

“People learn differently,” he said. “In the old days, there was one and only one way. We need to try to train our [volunteer tutor] students to go into the lower-grade classrooms and work with the third-grade students, teachers and parents in partnership--and to understand how to use technology and the traditional classroom to catch up if you’re falling behind.”

Munitz called Corrigan “the perfect choice” to guide the program, saying he has been “working for decades on community-based learning, service learning and the role of urban universities.”

Corrigan could not be reached for comment.

Clinton said the Education Department would waive its requirement that colleges pay 25% of the work-study costs for students who work as reading tutors. The federal government will assume the full cost.

“With today’s actions by these college presidents, and with the steps we are taking to help them, college students can now work their way through school by teaching our children how to read,” Clinton said. “That is how we will take more responsibility, create more opportunity and build a stronger, more united community for all Americans.”