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California Schools Use Volunteers to Help Boost Test Scores

Friday, 05 September 2008 00:00

Local Tutors Help Schools Triple API State-Mandated Growth Targets

Contact: Kim Acker
650-269-2888
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Milpitas, CA – September 5, 2008 – When Aaliyiah Smith arrived in Ms. Natalie Baird’s fifth-grade classroom at Berkley Maynard Academy last fall, "She wouldn’t raise her hand to participate in class, and she wasn't doing her homework at all,” says Baird.

Aaliyiah was one of 45 children at Berkley Maynard Academy referred to a program run by Reading Partners, the Bay Area’s fastest growing children’s literacy nonprofit organization. Reading Partners trains community volunteers to tutor struggling young readers, and partners with underserved schools to integrate individual tutoring into the student's regular school day.

Schools in California are held to an "Academic Performance Index" or API standard set by the 1999 Public Schools Accountability Act, which is also used to hold schools to the No Child Left Behind Act. When California’s API scores were released this past Thursday, schools that had implemented Reading Partners’ literacy programming for at least one school year, on average, tripled their state-mandated 2007-08 growth targets.

“The future of America depends on children's ability to read,” says Michael Lombardo, the Executive Director of Reading Partners.  “We're thrilled that principals have used our free service as part of an overall strategy to help improve their test scores."

Reading Partners provides tutors to students who have fallen behind one to two grade levels in reading.  After its 2007/8 assessments, Reading Partners showed that with thirty hours of tutoring, on average a student in its program will advance an entire grade level.

For Natalie Baird, though, that statistic doesn’t tell the whole story. "Aaliyiah raises her hand in class now and turns in her homework.  She looks at a word and knows how to break it down.  It's really about the strategies she's learned, and the relationship she's built with her tutor."

About Reading Partners

Reading Partners, formerly YES Reading, is the Bay Area’s fastest growing children’s literacy nonprofit, supported by Bay Area corporations and foundations. Reading Partners equips community volunteers to teach reading to struggling young readers, and partners with underserved schools to integrate tutoring into the student’s regular school day. Reading Partners has hundreds of trained volunteers working one-on-one with 500 students on the campuses of ten Bay Area schools. Seeking to reach 1000 children in 2008/2009 school year, Reading Partners is actively recruiting volunteers.