Reading Partners South Carolina reaches 47% more students, empowering children and communities to thrive

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Christine Messick, Director of Community Engagement

Reading Partners SC

843-830-3230 | christine.messick@staging.readingpartners.org

Local nonprofit’s 2021-22 impact results show critical support for students, schools, and communities

NORTH CHARLESTON, SC – September 12, 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 47% more local students in the 2021-22 school year than the year before.

“The pandemic exacerbated the literacy crisis here in SC, where only 20% of at-risk students are reading proficiently by the end of fourth grade,” said executive director, Kecia Greenho. “It has been estimated that students have lost an additional seven months to a year’s worth of learning, so we need community volunteers to serve as tutors now more than ever. Reading is foundational – the ability to read transforms lives and empowers children and communities to thrive.”

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 staging.readingpartners.org and include the following highlights in South Carolina.

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

• 8,275 total tutoring sessions were delivered to those same students

• 71% of sessions were delivered online via Reading Partners Connects

• 343 community tutors supported students

• 90% of volunteers were satisfied with their experience

• Learn more about Reading Partners’ impact in South Carolina here.

• Learn about Reading Partners’ national impact here.

In addition to reaching a lot of students, Reading Partners South Carolina achieved impressive student performance. In 2021-22, 79% of all Reading Partners students finished the year meeting or exceeding their primary end-of-year literacy growth goals, while 89% of K-2 Reading Partners students were developing mastery of key foundational reading skills needed to read and grade level.

Heading into the new school year, Reading Partners South Carolina 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 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.