Reading Partners Twin Cities reaches 46% more students, empowering children and communities to thrive

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Graham Sutherland

External Relations Director, Reading Partners Twin Cities

(206) 601-9458 | graham.sutherland@staging.readingpartners.org

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

SAINT PAUL, Minn. – September 15, 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 46% more local students in the 2021-22 school year than the year before.

“The widespread school interruptions of the past few years have exacerbated pre-existing opportunity gaps, especially for BIPOC students,” executive director Brooke Rivers said. “Reading is foundational — the ability to read transforms lives and empowers children and communities to thrive. Reading Partners’ one-on-one model offers a way for students to accelerate any learning they missed, as well as focus on building the confidence needed to succeed.”

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 Twin Cities.

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

• 7,392 total tutoring sessions were delivered to those same students

• 306 community tutors supported students

• 98% of volunteers were satisfied with their experience

• 100% of teachers report Reading Partners is valuable to their school

• Every student enrolled in Reading Partners received a summer backpack, filled with 5 new books and activity books to combat summer slide

• Learn more about Reading Partners’ impact in Twin Cities here.

• Learn about Reading Partners’ national impact here.

In addition to reaching a lot of students, Reading Partners Twin Cities achieved impressive student performance. In 2021-22, 87% of all Reading Partners students finished the year meeting or exceeding their primary end-of-year literacy growth goals, while 96% of K-2 Reading Partners students were developing mastery of key foundational reading skills needed to read and grade level.

“This is one of the most crucial times to support our students, and we can’t do this work alone,” said Rivers. “Reading Partners is growing, and we need our community behind us to make sure all of our students have a reading partner this year.

Heading into the new school year, Reading Partners Twin Cities anticipates needing more than 500 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.