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

An AmeriCorps member and a student in a reading center engaging in Reading Partners’ blended tutoring program (Photo Credit: Reading Partners)

Local nonprofit delivered over 24,500 one-on-one tutoring sessions and over 23,000 books to hundreds of students in New York City last year

NEW YORK, NY – September 13, 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.

“During the pandemic, we realized how important it was to ensure that our services could continue to be provided to students despite being remote,” said Reading Partners NYC Executive Director, Primo Lasana. “We believe that reading is a civil right and that in order to meet the needs of our students, our investment in tools such as the Reading Partners Connects platform to complement our in-person tutoring, is paramount to reach the growing number of students who require literacy support. Since arriving in NYC in 2011, our region has been known across the organization for our creative problem-solving abilities and we look forward to continuing to develop innovative solutions that benefit students in the years to come.”

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 nearly double the number of students in the 2022-23 school year as 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 New York City.

• 947 students participated in 12+ sessions of one-on-one tutoring

• 23,348 total tutoring sessions were delivered to those same students

• 87% of sessions were delivered online via Reading Partners Connects

• 1,041 community tutors supported students

• 23,340 books were distributed to students through the “Take Reading With You” program

• 81% of all Reading Partners students finished the year meeting or exceeding their primary end-of-year literacy growth goals

• 84% 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 New York City here.

• Learn about Reading Partners’ national impact here.

Volunteer support will help drive student impact in New York

Heading into the new school year, Reading Partners New York City anticipates needing 1,350 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 student uses Reading Partners Connects to work one-on-one with a volunteer tutor on a lesson (Photo Credit: Reading Partners)

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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.