In 1996 President Clinton established the America Reads Challenge Act (1997), which included a commitment that every child will read independently and well by the end of third grade. This initiative was predicated on links between achievement and poverty (Riley, 1996, 2002) and that children reading below grade level in the early grades perform more poorly in subsequent grades (Clay, 1985; Juel, 1996; Stanovich, 1986). Responding to this challenge, we report evidence that a structured volunteer tutoring program successfully increased culturally diverse students' reading/writing performance in six elementary schools in Southeast Michigan. Specifically, the objectives of the volunteer tutoring program were to increase the reading performance of culturally diverse students, improve students' attitudes toward reading, and evaluate the program's overall efficacy. (Contains 1 figure, 1 footnote and 9 tables.)