Reading Tutor, Program or App?

A child who is behind in reading in kindergarten through second grade is at the stage where help works best. A review of dozens of randomized tutoring experiments by Nickow, Oreopoulos and Quan found the largest effects in the earlier grades.

Which help to get depends on two things: how far behind your child is, and how much adult time your family has each day. A child a little behind on one skill does well with a structured reading program a parent teaches at home, plus daily practice. A child well behind, or not responding to the school’s extra help, needs a tutor trained in structured literacy. An app is the daily practice that makes either one work, never the teaching on its own.

The distinction under all of it is teaching versus practice. Tutors and programs teach a skill your child does not have yet. Apps and home routines give your child the repetitions that make a taught skill stick. Most struggling readers need both. If you are not sure yet which skill is missing, our guide to what “behind” actually means starts there.

Tutor, program or app: which one fits your child?

Whether a struggling reader needs a tutor, a reading program or an app depends on the size of the gap and how much adult time the family has. The school’s own reading intervention, where it is offered, is free and usually comes first, and our guide to reading intervention groups explains how it works. Outside school, start from the row that sounds most like your child.

Your child’s situation	Get this first	Then add
A little behind on one skill, such as blending sounds into words	A structured program a parent teaches at home, about 20 minutes most days	An app or a short home routine for daily practice
Well behind, or behind in more than one skill	A tutor trained in structured literacy, at least 2–3 sessions a week	Daily practice at home of what the tutor taught that week
In the school’s intervention group, with no movement after a month or more	A conversation with the school about the plan, then a trained tutor	Daily practice of the skill the group and the tutor are working on
Several signs of dyslexia	A request to the school about an evaluation, and a tutor trained in structured literacy	Daily practice of what is being taught

For a child who is well behind, every row pairs practice with a trained adult. The adult teaches the missing skill and changes the next step by watching what the child does; the daily practice, whether an app or a home routine, supplies the repetitions that make it stick.

How to judge any reading help: six checks

Six checks separate reading help that works from help that only fills time, and they apply to a tutor, a program and an app alike. The first four come from what the research says good early reading instruction does; the last two are about your family.

Check	What good help does	Why it matters	How to check
1. Teaches the code	Sounds in spoken words, then letters, then blending sounds into words, in a set order	The Institute of Education Sciences rates this its top tier of evidence (below)	Ask to see the order sounds and letters are taught in
2. Starts from an assessment	Tests your child first and names the skill it starts on	Help aimed at the wrong skill wastes the weeks that matter most	Ask what will be tested before the first lesson
3. Never teaches guessing	Has the child sound a word out, not guess it from the picture or the first letter	Guessing is a habit a child later has to unlearn	Watch a session or a lesson: what happens when your child gets a word wrong?
4. Happens often enough	At least 2–3 sessions a week for a child well behind	Tutoring effects are largest at three or more sessions a week, and weekly sessions help little (below)	Ask how many sessions a week are recommended, not just the price of one
5. Measures progress	Short, repeated checks on the skill being taught, shared with you	Without a check, “it is going well” is a feeling, not a result	Ask how and how often you will hear about progress
6. Includes daily practice	Gives your child repetitions on the days between sessions	A tutor sees a child an hour or two a week; a new skill needs practice most days	Ask what your child should practice at home each day

The sections after the ranking go deeper on each check: what good help teaches first, how to choose a tutor, and how often sessions should be.

The best reading help for struggling readers, ranked

The five kinds of help below are ranked by how much teaching each one provides, judged on the six checks above, which is the order a parent of a struggling reader should consider them in. A tutor and an app do different jobs, so they are not ranked on one scale; each entry says who it is for.

How we checked. We build Wonster Words, the app named in entry 4. We read each program’s and service’s own website in October 2026 for its price, who teaches it and how often. We have not used the programs or services listed ourselves. The evidence on tutoring comes from the studies named on this page.

1. A tutor trained in structured literacy: Best for a child well behind

Best for: a child well behind, behind in several skills, not moving with the school’s help, or showing signs of dyslexia.

What it does well: one trained adult watches your child read and adjusts the next step within the same session. In the Nickow, Oreopoulos and Quan review, effects were largest for programs that use teachers or paraprofessionals as tutors and meet at least 3 days a week. Structured literacy is the explicit, step-by-step teaching of sounds, letters and how words are built, and Orton-Gillingham is one well-known approach built on it.

Where it falls short: it costs more than a program or an app every week it runs, a trained tutor may not be available near you, and the title “reading tutor” covers anyone from a structured literacy specialist to a homework helper.

Typical cost: rates are set by each tutor. We found no independent published figure for a typical rate, so we give none; the cost section below says how to compare.

How to find one: the International Dyslexia Association publishes a provider directory you can search for tutoring, with the note that IDA does not recommend or endorse anyone listed. The Center for Effective Reading Instruction lists structured literacy professionals by state. The Orton-Gillingham Academy emails parents a list of its members in their state on request.

Skip it if: your child is a little behind on one skill and you can teach a structured program yourself for about 20 minutes most days.

2. A structured reading program a parent teaches: Best for a child a little behind

Best for: a child a little behind, with a parent who has 20–30 minutes most days and is willing to follow a script.

What it does well: it costs far less than a tutor, and a good program tells you exactly what to say, in what order. Four that a parent can teach:

• Barton Reading & Spelling System. Describes itself as Orton-Gillingham influenced and is taught one-on-one by a parent or tutor. A child must first pass Barton’s 10-minute student screening, and Barton asks for at least 2 hours of one-on-one tutoring every week, saying once a week is not enough. Level 1 of the Barton Reading & Spelling System costs $325 without its storage box, and later levels cost more. Its case: a parent ready to become a child’s tutor for months, including a child with signs of dyslexia.
• All About Reading. Scripted lessons a parent teaches, placed by a placement test rather than by grade; its publisher says some lessons take a week or more. The All About Reading Level 1 materials cost $159.95 for the teacher’s manual, a student packet and three readers, with the review box and letter tiles sold separately, and the publisher offers a 12-month return. Its case: a parent who wants hands-on materials and a pace set by mastery.
• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. One book of 100 scripted Direct Instruction lessons of about twenty minutes each, which its publisher says take a child to “about a second-grade level”. The list price of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is $29.99. Its case: the lowest cost, for a parent comfortable following a script word for word.

Where it falls short: progress depends on the parent’s consistency, and a parent is not a trained tutor. The Nickow, Oreopoulos and Quan working paper found tutoring effects weaker, on average, for parent tutors than for teachers and paraprofessionals.

Typical cost: from the price of one book to a few hundred dollars per level, or a monthly subscription.

Skip it if: your child is well behind, or you cannot protect 20 minutes on most days.

Barton says its system is popular with homeschool parents because daily tutoring is ideal, and any of the four can serve as the reading part of a homeschool plan.

3. Live online tutoring: Best when no trained tutor is local

Best for: a family with no trained tutor nearby, or a schedule that cannot fit travel to sessions.

What it does well: it gives a family anywhere a tutor trained in a specific method, live, one-on-one. Two services that sell directly to families:

• The Reading Guru. Tutors with Orton-Gillingham expertise, online or in person in four US cities, recommending two sessions a week with no contract. The Reading Guru lists sessions from $79.
• Lindamood-Bell. Live one-to-one online instruction in its own programs, including Seeing Stars and LiPS, described as daily and intensive. It does not publish prices; a family asks a learning center.

Where it falls short: the first randomized trial of virtual tutoring with kindergarten to second grade children, by Carly Robinson and colleagues at Stanford, found positive effects smaller than those usually found for in-person tutoring.

Typical cost: per session, like a local tutor. The Reading Guru publishes a starting price and Lindamood-Bell does not.

Skip it if: a trained tutor is available locally, or your child cannot yet sit with an adult on a screen for 20 minutes.

4. Reading and phonics apps: Best for daily practice between sessions

Best for: the practice between sessions for any option above, or the whole plan only for a child just starting to slip on one skill.

What it does well: a tutor sees a child for an hour or two a week, and an app supplies the daily repetitions in between. Wonster Words is our example: it is built for independent play on Apple, Google Play and Amazon Kindle Fire tablets, ages 2–8, and it emails you a daily and a weekly report on what your child played. Its price is in the cost table below. Our comparison of phonics apps covers the others.

Where it fits best: practice and repetition, especially for a reluctant reader, or a child still learning the early literacy skills: the alphabet, the sounds in words, phonics, spelling, CVC words and sight words. It works best as part of a fuller effort that includes direct teaching by a tutor, a teacher or a parent. In Wonster Words, you open the section for the skill your child’s tutor or teacher is working on, so the daily practice matches the week’s teaching.

Typical cost: free to a monthly subscription.

Best paired with: entry 1 or 2 for a child well behind, so the teaching and the practice work on the same skill.

5. The school: Best as the free first step

Best for: every family, first. Ask for your child’s screening results and whether the school runs a reading intervention group.

What it does well: it is free, it happens during the school day, and it comes with progress monitoring, regular short checks that show whether the help is working. Nickow, Oreopoulos and Quan found larger effects for tutoring held during school than after it.

Where it falls short: you do not control the pace, the group is shared, and what is offered differs a great deal between districts.

Typical cost: free.

Skip it if: never skip asking. Add a tutor alongside it if the group has not moved your child after a month or more.

Does reading tutoring work?

Yes: tutoring is one of the best-tested ways to raise early reading. The largest review, by Andre Nickow, Philip Oreopoulos and Vincent Quan in the American Educational Research Journal (2024), pooled dozens of randomized experiments in preK–12 tutoring and found an average effect of 0.29 standard deviations, which the authors call “consistently substantial”. In plain terms, that would move a child at the middle of a group to roughly the 61st percentile.

Four conditions went with larger effects in that review:

• tutors who were teachers or paraprofessionals
• earlier grades
• sessions at least 3 days a week
• tutoring held during the school day

An earlier working-paper version of the same review found that the drop in effects as grades rise came entirely from reading programs: reading tutoring does most in kindergarten and first grade.

The programs behind those numbers taught specific skills. Tutoring that gave explicit instruction in phonics and decoding in first through third grade produced effects at or above 0.33 standard deviations, while a repeated-reading program in second and third grade produced effects closer to 0.10. The working paper also found little evidence that once-a-week sessions produce large gains.

So the tutoring that works for a K–2 child is frequent, delivered by a trained adult, and teaches decoding explicitly. A tutor who offers one weekly hour of reading together is not the tutoring this research measured.

What should a reading tutor or program teach first?

A tutor or program for a K–2 child should start with the sounds in spoken words, then the letters that spell them, then blending sounds into words. The Institute of Education Sciences foundational skills practice guide rates two recommendations “strong evidence”, its top tier: develop awareness of the sounds in speech and how they link to letters, and teach children to decode words, analyze word parts, and write and recognize words. The guide is written for schools, and applying it to a tutor or a home program is our adaptation.

The International Dyslexia Association puts the same idea plainly: “What does work is Structured Literacy, which prepares students to decode words in an explicit and systematic manner.” Our guide to what order to teach phonics sets out the sequence step by step.

What good help does not do is teach a child to guess a word from the picture or the first letter. A child taught to guess has a habit to unlearn, and why your child guesses at words explains how to spot it.

Bring these to a first meeting with any tutor or program:

• Will you assess my child before the first lesson, and what will you test?
• Which skill will you start with, and why that one?
• Do you teach sounds and letters in a set order? Can I see it?
• How will you check progress, and how often will you tell me?
• What should we practice at home each day?

How to choose a reading tutor

Choose a reading tutor on training, a plan, and a way to measure progress, in that order. Training in structured literacy, such as Orton-Gillingham training or a structured literacy certification, means the tutor has been taught to teach decoding explicitly. The directories in entry 1 list people with that training.

A plan means the tutor assessed your child and can name the skill they are starting on. A way to measure progress means short, repeated checks on that skill, not a feeling that sessions are going well.

The questions parents ask most map onto those three:

• “What qualifications should a reading tutor have?” Structured literacy or Orton-Gillingham training, and experience with your child’s age.
• “How will we know it is working?” A named skill, a check, and a date to look again.
• “How often should sessions be?” At least 2–3 a week for a child well behind. Barton, one of the programs in entry 2, says once a week is not enough.

Red flags, each of which is common:

• No assessment before teaching starts. The tutor cannot know where to begin.
• No plan in terms of skills. “We will read together and build confidence” is not a plan for a child who cannot yet blend sounds into words.
• Teaching guessing. Cueing a child to use the picture or the first letter instead of sounding the word out.
• Homework help sold as reading help. Finishing worksheets does not teach a missing skill.

Online or in person, one-on-one or small group?

In person is the stronger choice for a young child, and online is a real option when no trained tutor is local. In the randomized trial by Robinson and colleagues, kindergarten to second grade children met an online tutor for 20 minutes, four times a week, from September to May. Any online tutoring raised early literacy by 0.05–0.08 standard deviations, and one-on-one sessions by 0.07–0.12. First graders gained 0.20 and children who started well below benchmark gained 0.15 from one-on-one tutoring. The authors note the effects were smaller than those usually found for in-person early literacy tutoring.

One-on-one and small groups both work. In the Nickow, Oreopoulos and Quan working paper, one-on-one tutoring by teachers and paraprofessionals showed the largest effects, with groups of more than one child statistically similar. In grades 2–5, groups of three or more did especially well. A school intervention group is not a lesser option for that reason, though a child who is not moving in one may need one-on-one time added.

How often, and how soon should you see progress?

For a child well behind, plan on sessions at least 3 days a week, the frequency the Nickow, Oreopoulos and Quan review found with larger effects. Programs in that review ran sessions from 10–15 minutes to more than an hour, most often 30–60 minutes. For a 5- or 6-year-old, shorter and more frequent is easier to sustain.

Expect visible change on one specific skill within 4–6 weeks of consistent, targeted practice. Slower progress than you hoped for is not the same as none. If a month or more of targeted help has moved nothing at all, change the approach: more frequent sessions, a different skill as the starting point, or a more trained tutor. Our guide to why practice is not working helps sort out which.

Broader gaps take months rather than weeks. Barton, for example, says a student with classic dyslexia tutored one-on-one twice a week takes 3–5 months to complete one of its later levels.

Can an app help a struggling reader?

An app can help a struggling reader practice, and the evidence is strongest for the narrow, code-focused skills. A meta-analysis by Kim, Gilbert, Yu and Gale in AERA Open (2021) pooled 36 studies of educational apps from preschool to third grade and found an average effect of 0.31 standard deviations. Effects were larger for constrained skills, such as letters, sounds and decoding, than for broad ones like comprehension, and larger in preschool than in kindergarten to third grade.

That makes an app’s job specific. A child who has been taught a sound pattern needs many correct repetitions of it, and a tutor who sees them twice a week cannot supply those. An app can, on the days in between. An app is at its best paired with a tutor or a parent who notices why a child is stuck and adjusts the teaching, while the app keeps the practice going every day. Our guide to whether reading apps work covers the research in more detail.

Is a tutor necessary in kindergarten or first grade?

Usually not as the first step. A reading screener flag in kindergarten or first grade points at a skill to look at, not a verdict, and the school’s intervention plus a structured program at home is the place to start. Ask the school for the screener results and which skill they point to.

A tutor is worth adding in kindergarten or first grade when your child is well below benchmark, when a month or more of targeted help has not moved anything, or when several signs of dyslexia appear together. Those are the children who gained most in the online tutoring trial: first graders and children starting well below benchmark. Kindergarten and first grade are also where the tutoring research finds reading tutoring doing the most, so a tutor added then is well timed rather than an overreaction.

What if it is dyslexia?

If your child shows several signs of dyslexia, the help to look for is the same kind, delivered with more training and more often. The International Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as “a specific learning disability characterized by difficulties in word reading and/or spelling that involve accuracy, speed, or both”. Only an evaluation can say whether a child has it, and our guide to the signs of dyslexia by age sets out what to watch for and how testing works.

What changes in the help is intensity. Look for a tutor trained in structured literacy, sessions several times a week, and a program that teaches sounds and letters explicitly and in order, such as one built on Orton-Gillingham. An app stays in the same role it has for every child: daily practice of what is being taught.

How much does reading help cost?

Reading help ranges from free at school to a few hundred dollars a level for a program and more for a tutor. These are the prices each provider publishes, read on the provider’s own site in October 2026.

Option	What it costs	Who teaches
The school’s intervention	Free	School staff
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons	$29.99 list price	A parent
All About Reading Level 1	$159.95 for the materials	A parent
Barton Reading & Spelling System Level 1	$325 without the box	A parent or tutor
Wonster Words	$10.99/mo or $59.99/yr, 7-day free trial	Practice your child does independently
The Reading Guru	From $79 a session	An online or in-person tutor
Lindamood-Bell	Not published	An online or in-person instructor

For a private tutor, compare the price per session, its length, and how many sessions a week the tutor recommends. A tutor who recommends twice a week costs twice as much per month as one who meets weekly, and for a child well behind, twice a week is the one that matches the research. We found no independent published figure for a typical reading tutor’s rate, so we do not quote one.

Whatever you choose, watch for the signs that the help is working away from the lesson: your child sounds out a word they have never seen, reads a page of a book with less help than last month, or spells a practiced pattern correctly in a new word. Those are what a tutor, a program and an app are all for.