Reading Partners is ramping up innovation in 2023-24 to expand literacy access and educational equity

A volunteer tutor and a student in a reading center engaging in Reading Partners’ traditional tutoring program (Photo Credit: Reading Partners)

Local nonprofit delivered over 18,000 one-on-one tutoring sessions and over 14,500 books to hundreds of students in Colorado last year

DENVER, Colo. – September 8, 2023  — 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.

“Reading is a fundamental human right. We can hardly imagine life without it, yet many students in Colorado need additional one-on-one attention – more than even our best teachers can provide,” Executive Director Melissa Monforti said. “Students have so much potential and our one-on-one early literacy support is a key to unlocking it.”

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 a variety of 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 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 staging.readingpartners.org and include the following highlights in Colorado.

• 556 students received 12+ sessions of one-on-one tutoring

• 18,269 total tutoring sessions were delivered to those same students

• 786 community tutors supported students

• 14,674 books were distributed to students through the “Take Reading With You” program

• 82% of all Reading Partners students finished the year meeting or exceeding their primary end-of-year literacy growth goals

• 86% of K-2 Reading Partners students were developing mastery of key foundational reading skills needed to read and grade level

• Learn more about Reading Partners’ impact in Colorado here.

• Learn about Reading Partners’ national impact here.

“The reason for our program’s success? Absolutely our amazing volunteer tutors,” Community Engagement Manager, Hannah Belich described. “Our job is to make it fun and easy, but volunteer tutors have that direct relationship, that direct impact. It’s so meaningful for both the tutor and the student.”

Volunteer support will help drive student impact in Colorado

Heading into the new school year, Reading Partners Colorado anticipates needing 1,000 community volunteers to support students’ literacy development. Please 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)

###

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 staging.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.