Reading Partners Transforms Struggling Students Into Confident Readers

Serving over 130 schools in low-income communities across seven states and the District of Columbia, Reading Partners is a leading non-profit literacy organization dedicated to improving students' reading skills and closing the reading achievement gap in the United States. Reading Partners works with under-resourced Title I elementary schools to support students who are reading 6 months to 2.5 years below grade level. The non-profit recruits and trains community volunteers to tutor students one-on-one for 45 minutes twice a week following a research-based curriculum.

Based in Oakland, California, Reading Partners was launched in 1999 by Molly McCrory, Mary Wright Shaw, and Jean Bacigalupi as a one-on-one tutoring program for children with the poorest reading skills at Belle Haven Community School in Menlo Park. The organization was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) called YES Reading in 2001 and was later renamed Reading Partners in 2008.


Strong reading skills are crucial to a child's success in school and life. In the fourth grade, students transition from learning to read to reading to learn, using their reading skills to explore new subjects such as geography, science, and history. Kids reading below grade level are four times more likely to drop out of school before graduation, and high school dropouts are more likely to be arrested or become a teenage parent.

In 2013, just 34 percent of the country's fourth graders could read proficiently. The statistics are more alarming among students from low-income families – 82 percent of kids eligible for free or reduced lunches cannot read proficiently.

Reading Partners works in schools with high percentages of children from low-income backgrounds, transforming an empty classroom into a reading center managed by a full-time staff member, complete with a library and teaching tools. Reading Partners recruits and trains volunteers to provide weekly tutoring using its easy-to-use, structured curriculum comprising lesson plans that range from phonics instructions to higher order comprehension strategies. To date, Reading Partners has helped tens of thousands of students become proud, confident readers.