 
Improving Literacy through Service
It’s an accepted fact that after the third grade, children need to transition from learning to read to reading to learn to stay on track academically. This is one of the most important indicators of future success for students and a factor that can greatly reduce the high school dropout rate if addressed in time.
The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) is committed to supporting community-based education initiatives that prepare and support students in the classroom, starting from the pre-K years onward. This support is especially important in schools and communities that lack resources to provide additional support for struggling readers and children who need extra help to keep pace with their studies.
We help place tutors and mentors in early education classrooms through our Senior Corps RSVP and Foster Grandparent programs, creating intergenerational exchanges that benefit both the students and volunteers as the extra attention builds the confidence of young readers. A number of AmeriCorps programs – such as Experience Corps, Reading Partners, and Reading Corps – have placed thousands of tutors in schools to use proven techniques to bolster the reading proficiency of their students.
The impact of these interventions is not just anecdotal – our Research and Evaluation team has supported studies that show the effectiveness of these programs in improving literacy.
-
Reading Partners, which engages AmeriCorps members to leverage community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring, had a positive impact on three different measures of student reading scores equivalent to 1.5 to 2 months of additional growth.
-
Experience Corps uses an intergenerational model to pair tutors with young readers to improve literacy by third grade. Children in Experience Corps schools had significantly higher scores on a standardized reading test than children in the control schools, and office referrals for classroom misbehavior decreased by about half.
- A third-party evaluation of Reading Corps, the largest AmeriCorps tutoring program, found that the program’s students showed growth equal to an extra 50 to 90 percent of a year of school. Plus, the program has been extremely replicable, expanding from its original base in Minnesota to cover 12 states and the District of Columbia. More than 1,500 AmeriCorps tutors are supporting 36,000 children each year through Reading Corps.
Education is one of the most important areas in the CNCS portfolio. In fact, we allocate approximately half of our Congressional appropriation to these and other education initiatives to support America’s youth from pre-K through college.
As we send our children off to school each day, we want all of them to dream big dreams and have the opportunity to achieve them. With the help of dedicated educators and our national service partners, more of America’s children will have that chance.
In service,
Mike Cys
Director, Office of External Affairs
P.S. AmeriCorps Week 2019 is just around the corner. Visit our AmeriCorps Week portal to find resources to help you promote the many ways national service is getting things done.
|
