September 13, 2022
Reading Partners Colorado reaches 114% more students, empowering children and communities to thrive
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Hannah Belich
Community Engagement Manager, Reading Partners Colorado
720-409-9909 | volunteerco@readingpartners.
Local nonprofit’s 2021-22 impact results show critical support for students, schools, and communities
DENVER, Colo. – September 13, 2022 — Despite COVID-19 variants creating ongoing disruptions in schools, Reading Partners continued to provide critical literacy support to students, schools, and communities. In fact, the nonprofit provided literacy tutoring to 114% more local students in the 2021-22 school year than the year before.
A study by the Annie E. Casey foundation found that kids “who [aren’t] reading proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma than proficient readers,” and “for… those [who] couldn’t master even the basic skills by third grade, the rate is nearly six times greater.” Given the impact of the pandemic and its disproportionate effect on historically underserved communities, it is more crucial than ever that we step-up our efforts to support our youngest learners’ growth as readers, which can transform and empower their success.
2021-22 results show that Reading Partners continued to positively impact students
Each year, Reading Partners publishes reports highlighting student performance for the national organization and for each of its 12 respective regions across the country. The Impact & Innovation reports for the 2021-22 school year have recently been posted on readingpartners.org and include the following highlights in Colorado.
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551 students received 12+ sessions of one-on-one tutoring
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13,989 total tutoring sessions were delivered to those same students
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516 community tutors supported students
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100% of volunteers were satisfied with their experience
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ALL students received a summer reading backpack to combat summer slide
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Learn more about Reading Partners’ impact in Colorado here.
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Learn about Reading Partners’ national impact here.
In addition to reaching a lot of students, Reading Partners Colorado achieved impressive student performance. In 2021-22, 81% of all Reading Partners students finished the year meeting or exceeding their primary end-of-year literacy growth goals, while 84% of K-2 Reading Partners students were developing mastery of key foundational reading skills needed to read and grade level.
“Reading Partners is excited to be able to provide students with the incredible opportunity to work one-on-one with a volunteer and build relationships while growing as readers, which is so rare in public education, and allows each student to have a customized reading experience,” said Brett Butler, deputy program director.
Heading into the new school year, Reading Partners Colorado anticipates needing more than 800 community volunteers to support students’ literacy development. Follow this link if you’re interested in investing one hour a week to help empower a student through reading.
Reading Partners also gets help from AmeriCorps members to train and provide ongoing support to literacy volunteers. Please follow this link if you’re interested in becoming an AmeriCorps member at Reading Partners.
A volunteer tutor and a student in a reading center engaging in Reading Partners’ traditional tutoring program (Photo Credit: Reading Partners)
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About Reading Partners
For over 20 years, Reading Partners has helped empower students to succeed in school and beyond by engaging community volunteers to provide proven, one-on-one literacy tutoring. Since its founding, the national nonprofit organization has mobilized over 75,000 community volunteers to provide more than 2.5 million individualized literacy tutoring sessions to more than 70,000 elementary school students in nearly 470 under-resourced schools across ten states and the District of Columbia. Visit readingpartners.org to learn more about our program impact and our Reading Partners Connects online program innovation, or connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Reading Partners is a proud AmeriCorps service partner and has been endorsed by The New York Times.
