Reading Partners

Reading Partners
Founded 2001
Focus Children's Literacy
Location
Area served
San Francisco Bay Area
Sacramento
Los Angeles County
New York City
Washington DC
Baltimore
Dallas
Denver
Charleston, SC
Tulsa
Seattle
Key people
 Michael Lombardo, CEO
Revenue
$21M
Employees
250
Slogan One Tutor. One Child.
Infinite Possibilities.
Website readingpartners.org

Reading Partners is a children's literacy nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay Area with programs in over 40 school districts throughout California, New York, Washington DC, Maryland, Texas, Colorado, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Washington.

In the 2014-15 school year, Reading Partners will serve a total of over 8,500 students in 160 elementary schools.

Program

In its core program, Reading Partners operates Reading Centers at elementary schools in under-served communities where children reading below grade level receive free one-on-one tutoring from volunteers using a structured, research-based curriculum.[1] The program has a success rate of nearly 90% in measurably helping students improve their progress in reading, with over 75% narrowing the achievement gap by the end of the school year.

Teachers refer students struggling with reading to the campus Reading Partners program, where they receive the one-on-one attention of a trained volunteer tutor for ninety minutes each week. Tutoring sessions focus on building students’ reading skills in five critical areas of literacy: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Reading Partners’ curricular materials consist of three key components, each of which address different levels of reading ability with curriculum-based, logically sequenced materials. Upon entry into Reading Partners, every student is assessed using the Rigby PM Ultra Benchmarking Kit and placed into one of the three programs depending on the child’s individual needs.

History

Reading Partners began at Belle Haven Elementary School in Menlo Park when members of the community joined together to help students struggling with reading skills. At the time, fewer than 1 in 5 students at Belle Haven could read at grade level and more than 80% of students qualified for the National School Lunch Program. Starting with just three volunteers working in the school library, the organization quickly grew to serve more than 100 children at Belle Haven and began replicating to nearby Title I elementary schools.

Originally called YES Reading, the organization changed its name to Reading Partners in 2008. From 2008 to 2014, the program expanded from serving 20 elementary schools in California to over 160 schools in 8 states and the District of Columbia.

References

  1. ↑ http://mercurynews.info/wishbook/2008/page.php?w=reading
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