Reading Partners South Carolina

Reading Partners’ mission is to help children become lifelong readers by empowering communities to provide individualized instruction with measurable results. Reading Partners’ overarching goal is to help close the reading achievement gap for children living in poverty, by producing measurable improvement in their reading skills and putting them on track to read on grade level by the end of third grade.

In a typical school year, Reading Partners recruits and trains 800+ volunteers to provide tutoring to 700+ students in under-resourced elementary schools in Charleston and Berkeley Counties. Our student-tutor pairs work together 45 minutes twice per week, following an Instructional Reading Plan (IRP), which guides tutoring toward specific literacy goals using district test data, national literacy assessment measures, and input from students’ teachers and principals. To execute the IRP, tutors use Reading Partners’ evidence-based curriculum to support students’ mastery of target learning skills. Lesson packets include lesson plans, practice materials, and books—everything a tutor needs to successfully provide a reading lesson.

During the 2021-22 school year, we expect to work with 15-17 schools, serving 700+ students using a hybrid program model. We anticipate the majority 700+ of our students will be seen in-person using our traditional program, and also plan to serve students in remote communities or those learning from home using our online tutoring program, Reading Partners Connects.

Counties Served

Charleston and Berkeley Counties

Annual Cost

$2,152,186

Partner Organizations

Reading Partners is grateful for our longstanding partnerships with Charleston and Berkeley County School Districts and individual schools we serve. We are an approved Tier-2 reading intervention with the SC Department of Education and funded partner for Read to Success Summer Camps in Charleston County. For 9 years we have worked side-by-side with superintendents, principals, and teachers to fully integrate our program into our school partners’ curriculum and schedules.

We have dozens of businesses and organizations who serve as partners by encouraging employees, students, and supporters to volunteer including: City of Charleston, City of North Charleston, Charleston County Government, College of Charleston, Charleston Southern University, Charleston School of Law, Charleston County School District, Second Presbyterian, Grace Episcopal Church, Seacoast Church, St. Clare of Assisi Parish, United Methodist Churches, Unitarian Church of Charleston, Bishop Gadsden, Kiwanis, Kiawah Cares, Boeing, BenefitFocus, Bosch, Boomtown, Blackbaud, Nucor, Santee Cooper, Steinberg Law Firm, Reading With Realtors, Alpha Delta Women’s Club, Tri-County Black Nurses Association, National Council of Negro Women, Berkeley Electric Cooperative, Ingevity, Joint Base Charleston,Cynthia Graham Hurd Foundation and WCSC Channel 5.

We have forged new church partnerships to create tutoring centers where volunteers can safely provide virtual tutoring. These partners are providing space and utilities at no charge and are recruiting congregations to tutor: St. Andrew’s, Mt Pleasant Presbyterian, Westminster Presbyterian, James Island Presbyterian, St. John’s Parish, St. Matthew’s Lutheran, Cooper River Baptist, Kings Cross, Northwoods Baptist, First Christian Church of Moncks Corner.

Funding Sources

Cash:

• South Carolina Department of Education
• Corporation for National and Community Service
• AmeriCorps
• Charleston County School District and Schools
• Berkeley County School District and Schools
• The Duke Endowment
• JH Walker Legacy Foundation
• Trident
• United Way
• Emily and Steve Swanson
• Richard and Shara Star
• Kohlheim Family Fund
• Peter R & Cynthia K
• Kellogg Foundation
• Pam and Michael Wilson Family Fund
• Kiawah Cares
• Birk Family Foundation
• Coastal Community Foundation
• Dominion Energy
• Patrick Family Fund
• Blackbaud
• Roger and Teresa Jones
• Bakker Family Fund
• Truist Foundation
• Volvo Fund
• PureCars Social Justice Fund
• Daniel Island Community Fund
• Dollar General Literacy Foundation
• Grace Episcopal Church
• Mark Elliott Motley Foundation
• Giving Back to Berkeley County Fund
• Home Community Fund
• South Carolina Ports Authority
• Reading Partners South Carolina Regional Board (100% giving Almost 500 recurring individual donors

In-Kind:

Berkeley and Charleston County School Districts/Schools

Evidence

Reading Partners South Carolina is one of 12 regions under the national Reading Partners umbrella, which operates under one 501c3, although regions function autonomously under a local Executive Director and Board. In March 2011, Reading Partners National received a three-year True North Fund investment of $3.5 million in grants from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and the Social Innovation Fund, matched by $3.5 million from True North Fund co-investors, to expand its early-intervention literacy program to elementary schools throughout the country and to evaluate its effectiveness.

These investments helped to launch the South Carolina region in 2013 and provided the funding for MDRC, the nation’s leading education research group, to conduct an evaluation of the Reading Partners program during the 2012-2013 school year. The study was conducted in 19 schools in three states, with more than 1,100 students randomly assigned to program and control groups. The study provided some of the strongest evidence to date about the effectiveness of tutoring programs with young struggling readers (Tepper-Jacob, Armstrong, and Altuna-Willard, 2015).  Key findings include:

• Reading Partners has a positive and statistically significant impact on three core measures of student reading proficiency: reading comprehension, reading fluency, and sight-word reading.
• Reading Partners provides students with about a month’s worth of supplemental reading instruction during the year, yet helps students achieve about one-and-a-half to two months of reading achievement over and above students, receiving other supplemental literacy services, but not enrolled in Reading Partners.
• Reading Partners is replicated in schools with a high degree of fidelity. No matter in which school Reading Partners is delivered, high quality and well-trained program staff and volunteers consistently implement the program model.
• Reading Partners’ program is effective for a wide variety of students—including those from different grades or baseline reading achievement levels, male or female students, and for those who are not native English speakers.
• Reading Partners may be particularly effective for the most vulnerable students, moving them out of the lowest-performing literacy quartile through mastery of foundational literacy concepts.
• Reading Partners is an affordable, high-value program for schools. By leveraging community-based and civic resources, the program provides a resource-rich program at less than half the cash cost of the total program value.

Reading Partners South Carolina has implemented this evidence-based program model since its inception in 2013, and uses local school achievement data and national literacy assessment measures to collect evidence on an annual basis to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in South Carolina. Across our 9-year history of providing reading instruction in Charleston and Berkeley County Title I schools, our region has consistently produced some of the highest student outcomes across the national organization.

Prior to schools closing due to the pandemic during 2019-20 school year, 91% of South Carolina kindergarten through fifth grade students met or exceeded their primary end-of-year literacy goals, which were developed in partnership with local school teachers and principals, and 94% of kindergarten through second grade students mastered the foundational reading skills necessary to read at grade level. We also maintained strong relationships with stakeholders: 100% of principals reported school-wide student reading progress and volunteers reported a 96% satisfaction rate with their experience. These results are slightly lower than a typical school year due to the shortened tutoring year.

Reading Partners has continued to grow the program’s evidence base since the landmark MDRC study published in 2015. A five-year independent study conducted by Augenblick, Palaich, and Associates (APA), also funded through the Social Innovation Fund, affirms the strength of Reading Partners’ program. The study, conducted from 2012-2017, found that students who participated in Reading Partners during one school year had significantly higher spring assessment scores compared to similar students who did not participate, as indicated by teacher-administered assessments. The study also analyzed Reading Partners’ program implementation and found that Reading Partners was able to launch quickly and implement its program with fidelity in a new region. Additionally, findings from a two year research partnership with Child Trends, reaffirmed that Reading Partners improves students reading skills, and also found that the program improves social emotional learning skills.

Reading Partners has also received program recognition from IES What Works Clearinghouse, White House My Brother’s Keeper What Works Showcase, Evidence for ESSA, and Library of Congress Literacy Awards, 2017. Greater detail about the impact studies and recognition can be found on the Reading Partners website.

Sustainability

Since its inception, Reading Partners South Carolina has consistently met its annual fundraising goals to sustain and grow the program. We have established long-term relationships with our funding partners, the majority of whom have consistently made investments in our program for many years. We are entering the fifth year of a contract with the SC Department of Education to provide services to rural schools. We also have a multi-year grant with AmeriCorps that pays for more than 40% of personnel related expenses. Additionally, we have fee-for-service contracts with our partner schools and districts. These investments not only allow Reading Partners to better leverage philanthropic dollars to serve more schools, but they also encourage schools to be invested in the success of the program with their students.

For the past five years, Reading Partners South Carolina has been building a reserve fund which currently includes five months of operating expenses for the region. In the last four years, we have also successfully launched a major gifts society to increase individual giving, increasing contributions from major individual donors and family foundations by more than 700% to an annual amount of $450,000. More than $150,000 is given by our local Board.

To support sustainability, Reading Partners has established a three-pronged funding model. Our anchor funding for each school is provided by the school/district fee-for-service investment. The school’s contribution is augmented by an investment by the Corporation for National and Community Service AmeriCorps program which pays for site coordinators and literacy leads. The remaining funds are raised through philanthropic sources from the community. Our funding streams are diverse and include: foundations, corporations, individuals, government, and events. During the 2021-22 school year, governmental resources (Schools, Districts, SC Department of Education, Municipalities, AmeriCorps) will contribute an estimated 59% of funding needed per school. Through private philanthropy, Reading Partners board and staff will raise the remaining funds necessary to support our students.

Program innovations also support sustainability. Our new virtual tutoring program, Reading Partners Connects (RPCx), will allow us to significantly scale our impact in a post-COVID world. It represents another way that we are removing barriers for students to access high-quality literacy support to reach their limitless potential. RPCx will join the rest of Reading Partners’ program offerings, including Take Reading With You book distributions, After the Bell summer reading backpacks, and in-person tutoring, in providing evidence-based solutions to schools, readers, and families.

Grades Served

• Early Childhood (Pre-K – 2)
• Elementary (3-5)

Related Subjects

• English Language Arts

Contact Information 

Rebecca Hoffman, rebecca.hoffman@readingpartners.org