While Reading Partners’ online tutoring platform, Reading Partners Connects, was largely developed to help support students during the pandemic, the national nonprofit organization has worked to make its online tutoring even more interactive and to broaden the reach of the program to more students through national and community partnerships.
“At Reading Partners Baltimore, we’re committed to creating the support, resources, and positive opportunities youth need to improve learning loss gaps exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Zenobia Judd-Williams, Executive Director said. “We believe that reading is a civil right, one that will ultimately propel or limit young peoples’ life choices, and it’s our responsibility to diversify how and where we offer our services so that we can be a bridge to students’ greater academic success.”
Another new initiative Reading Partners has been focused on is writing and publishing original books to be used in its own curriculum. COVER to COVER is a new book series that enables Reading Partners to develop content that is aligned with the science of reading as well as the scope and sequence of the organization’s online and in-person curricula. The stories include representative characters and themes so all students can see themselves reflected in the books they read while also having the opportunity to learn about the world around them through other people’s backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences.
2022-23 results highlight the literacy progress of Reading Partners’ students
In the 2022-23 school year, Reading Partners continued to provide critical literacy support to students, schools, and communities. In fact, the nonprofit provided one-on-one literacy tutoring to 13% more local students in the 2022-23 school year than the prior year. 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 reports for the 2022-23 school year have recently been posted on readingpartners.org and include the following highlights in Baltimore:
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250 students received 12+ sessions of one-on-one tutoring
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6,031 total tutoring sessions were delivered to those same students
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309 community tutors supported students
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5,022 books were distributed to students through the “Take Reading With You” program
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79% of all Reading Partners students finished the year meeting or exceeding their primary end-of-year literacy growth goals
Volunteer support will help drive student impact in Baltimore
Heading into the new school year, Reading Partners Baltimore anticipates needing more than 600 community volunteers to support students’ literacy development through one-on-one tutoring. Please follow this link if you’re interested in investing one hour a week to help empower a student through reading.
Reading Partners also mobilizes 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—the application for members beginning service in October closes September 11, 2023.
About Reading Partners
For nearly 25 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 80,000 community volunteers to provide more than 2.7 million individualized literacy tutoring sessions to more than 75,000 elementary school students in over 500 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 and featured on The TODAY Show and GMA.
