The Accelerated Reader aims to assist with monitoring and managing the quantity and quality of reading practice, yielding frequent, detailed, and stable assessment of student reading comprehension of “real” books to enable timely and consistent teacher intervention and raise student motivation and metacognitive awareness. Any practicing teacher can think of many other paths toward these goals. However, not all of these have been demonstrated to be effective. Additionally, some alternatives are more time-consuming or more expensive to implement, so even if they are as effective as AR, they might not be as cost-effective. Further, identifying a single alternative that encompasses all the aims of AR is difficult.

Among the traditional methods of checking student reading comprehension is the book report. The time expended on this activity by the student is often considerable (even if voice-recognition software is available for computer dictation), and sometimes the sense of purpose is in doubt. Is it effective? Is it cost-effective?

Other options include teacher-devised questioning (orally or on paper), reciprocal teaching, small group or paired discussion (perhaps guided or scaffolded in some way, as outlined in the Read On project), literature-based Internet bulletin boards and websites for students, book discussion via e-mail, and so on. Many of these have significant time and other cost implications, however.

Readers are encouraged to post other suggestions to the Online Discussion Forum.

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