A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Samples of America Reads Challenge National Service Initiatives

NATIONAL

CHRISTIAN BROTHERS CONFERENCE
America Reads Contact: Bro.Theodore Drahmann
435l Garden City Drive
Landover, Md 20785
E-mail: brted4567@aol.com
Telephone: 30l-459-94l0 Fax: 301-459-8056

Participation: 20 colleges and universities sponsored by the Catholic teaching order of the Christian Brothers report that their students are tutoring disadvantaged elementary students in reading.

Tutoring: The 20 high schools and colleges are spread around the United States; a total of ll07 tutors are involved. Leading groups are La Salle Univesity, Philadelphia - 375; La Salle H.S. Pasadena - l60; De La Salle High School, Chicago - ll6; and St. John's H.S., Washngton - 99.

COLLINS MANAGEMENT CONSULTING, INC.
America Reads Contact: Ray Collins, Ph.D.
301 Maple Avenue West, Suite 602
Vienna, VA 22180
E-mail: rcollins@acf.dhhs.gov
Internet Address: http://ericps.crc.uiuc.edu/nccic/nccichome.html
Telephone: (703) 938-6555 Fax: (703) 255-6859

Participation: Collins Management Consulting, Inc. (CMC) administers two projects that support the America Reads Challenge. First, the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (ECTAC) has developed several publications as joint projects of the Department of Education, the Corporation for National Service, and the Child Care Bureau at the Department of Health and Human Services. These include "Ready*Set*Read for Families" and "Ready*Set*Read for Caregivers" (both booklets are focused on birth through age five); and "On the Road to Reading: A Guide for Community Partners" (focused on birth through grade three). Second, CMC administers the National Child Care Information Center (NCCIC) funded by the Child Care Bureau. An Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse for Child, NCCIC is a major source of information about child care in the United States. In cooperation with the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, NCCIC administers the Internet Web site noted above, that links to a number of organizations and activities related to reading and literacy development in young children.

Resources: Ray Collins is currently writing (under funding support of the Corporation for National Service for the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center) "Reading Helpers: A Training Handbook for Tutors" which is being developed as a companion volume to "On the Road to Reading."

DEPARTMENT OF ARMY
America Reads Contact: Susan Conkllin
4700 King Street 3rd Floor
Alexandria, VA 22302
E-mail: conklins@hoffman-cfsc.army.mil
Telephone: (703) 681-7257 Fax: (703) 681-7349

Participation: We are the largest defense organization with over a million family members on over 100 posts world-wide. Soldiers volunteer in schools helping improve academics and meet school needs. School/Army partnerships involve over 50,000 soldiers volunteering over 500,000 hours.

Tutoring: A key element of the Army/School partnerships is adopt-a-school which includes tutoring and mentoring.

Research: All posts report annually on status of programs and number of volunteers and hours.

Relations: An initiative for the future

EVERYBODY WINS!
America Reads Contact: Gladys Rosenblum
165 East 56th Street
New York, NY
E-mail: grosenblum@everybodywins.org Internet Address: everybodywins.org
Telephone: 212-832-1950 Fax: 212-832-3965

Participation: Everybody Wins! is a non-profit organization devoted to promoting children's literacy. Our "Power Lunch" is a literacy\mentoring program that matches volunteers from corporations and other community organizations with local public school children for one-to-one reading, one lunch hour a week. Everybody Wins! is headquartered in New York City where nearly 2,100 volunteers from some 100 organizations in the metropolitan area read to students in 25 elementary schools. There are affiliate programs in cities and towns across the country -- the largest being Boston and Washington, DC -- with volunteers from sources ranging from the Junior League to the Supreme Court bringing the national total to roughly 5,000.

Tutoring: At present, the "Power Lunch" serves public school children in grades 1 through 5. In some cases, where the school itself extends through the 8th grade and when the reading pairs want to stay together, "Power Lunch" can continue on until high school. Our volunteers come from a variety of organizations -- investment banks, law firms, the Junior League, Senior Citizen centers, hospitals, colleges and universities, etc. The focus in all of our sites is literacy, and, more broadly the world of ideas and the expression of ideas. The goal of "Power Lunch" is to help children learn to love reading, to see reading as the means to an end (the "end" being fun, adventure and friendship)instead of just a skill to be mastered in school, and, ultimately, to help children develop the skills and confidence that will help them be successful in whatever they do later in life.

Our volunteers are not just reading partners, they are caring, consistent adult role models who share their lives with their student partners and expose them to worlds, career options, etc. that they might not otherwise see. Since they are not technically tutors we do not provide a great deal of training, but do conduct orientation sessions and feedback\refresher sessions (often with the volunteers and teachers together) to communicate the scope, definition, structure and guidelines of the program, to assess the volunteers experience of and satisfaction with the program, to ask for their input about improvements and enhancements we might make, as well as provide them with whatever assistance they may need.

Resources: The Everybody Wins! staff coordinates and manages all aspects of "Power Lunch" for the volunteers as well as the schools, including recruiting volunteers, matching students, coordinating reading days, overseeing the reading in progress, and maintianing all communications.

Research: We are in the process of developing quantifiable assessment tools. To date the majority of evaluative materials have been anecdotal with input coming from principals, teachers, and volunteers

Relations: Everybody Wins! has received increasing amounts of both local and national media coverage -- but nearly all of that has been a result of a news agency or publication approaching us. We are in the process of stepping up our publicity efforts. We have formed coalitions with other groups sponsoring and promotion literacy efforts throughout the country, but mainly in New York. We are in close contact with other similar organizations to help create a pool of shared knowledge and experience.

JUMPSTART
America Reads Contact: Aaron Lieberman
93 Summer Street
Boston, MA
E-mail: aaron_lieberman@jstart.org Internet Address: http://www.jstart.org
Telephone: 617.542.JUMP Fax: 617.542.2557

Participation: Jumpstart is a national non-profit that engages young people in service to their communities to work one-on-one with young children who are struggling in the preschool setting. Jumpstart's mission is towork towards the day that every child in America enters school prepared to succeed. To accomplish this mission, Jumpstart builds School Success, Family Involvement and Future Teachers, one child at a time.

Jumpstart currently operates in Boston, New Haven, New York City and Washington DC. In all four cities more than 240 college students serve as part-time AmeriCorps members, making a 20-month commitment to serve young children and their families.

Tutoring: Jumpstart currently has over 240 college students serving as AmeriCorps members. Each student works directly with a young child twice a week. Jumpstart partners with Head Start and other early childhood programs serving low-income communities to reach the children most in need. The Jumpstart session occurs in the program partners' classroom that would ordinarily be shut down at the end of the school day. The model is cost-effective and convenient for young children and their families.

Resources: The Future Teachers component of Jumpstart is designed to provide on-going trainings to support and develop Corps Members knowledge of Early Childhood Education. After each Jumpstart session there is a Future Teachers Meeting. This is the time that Corps Members reflect on the day and receive training to further enhance their abilities in the classroom. Many of our materials are available on our web site.

Research: Jumpstart assesses and evaluates its progress and program several times throughout the year. These assessments and evaluations drive what and how we improve and refine our program. Program Partners, teachers, Corps Members and families fill-out evaluation forms. Jumpstart has a formal colaboration with the Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University. Jumpstart's quantitative tools used in conjunction with Bush Center are the Bracken Basic Concept Scale and the Teacher-Child Referal System. All of these different tools help to inform the program so that it can be as successful as possible.

Relations: Jumpstart has been featured in Who Cares Magazine, the Boston Globe, Swing Magazine, Education Week, and countless local newspapers and TV stations. In addition, Jumpstart produced an 8 minute promotional, and holds several annual events including Jumpstart KidsFest, April 25. This spring Jumpstart will open four new programs sites and launch a national public relations campaign highlighting national expansion and local programs.

NATIONAL JEWISH COALITION FOR LITERACY
America Reads Contact: Craig Sumberg
443 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10016-7322
E-mail: njcl@att.net
Website: http://www.njcl.net
Telephone: 212/545-9215 Fax: 212/545-9321

Participation: The NJCL is the organized Jewish community's vehicle for participation in the America Reads Challenge. Our seventeen endorsing agencies include most of the major social service-oriented groups in Jewish life (including representatives of the four major denominations). Since our creation in the Fall of 1997, we have successfully created nearly 40 local affiliates -- see our website for the most up-to-date list of affiliates and contact people -- and 10,000 weekly volunteer tutors and reading partners working with children in public schools across the country. Thousands of additional volunteers have been active in other literacy-support activities as well (book drives, substitute tutors, reading to children in pediatric clinics, etc.).

READING RECOVERY COUNCIL OF NORTH AMERICA
America Reads Contact: Jean F. Bussell
1929 Kenny Road - Suite 100
Columbus, Ohio
E-mail: bussell.4@osu.edu
Telephone: 614/292-7111 Fax: 614/292-4404

Participation: RRCNA is an international membership association of teachers, teacher leaders, site coordinators, university professors, other school personnel, and community members who are interested in serving children through Reading Recovery and other early literacy interventions. Children served by Reading Recovery are first graders who are experiencing difficulty in learning to read and write. Reading Recovery operates in nearly 10,000 schools nationwide, in 3,241 school districts, and in 48 states and the Department of Defense Dependents'Schools. Reading Recovery is provided in English and in Spanish.

Tutoring: Reading Recovery is a one-to-one tutoring intervention for first grade students who are having trouble learning to read and write. Reading Recovery teachers are trained professionals who provide thirty minute tutoring lessons daily to children. The goal of the tutoring is to accelerate reading performance for children who are at the bottom of their class in reading and move them into the average band for reading in their class within twenty weeks. Parents are asked to listen to their children each night and to assist their child in reviewing a cut up sentence or story which the child writes during the day's lesson.

Resources: There are 489 teacher training sites in the United States where specially trained teacher leaders provide training for Reading Recovery teachers. At each site schools may choose to involve volunteers, including parents, in supporting the Reading Recovery program. In such instances, the trained Reading Recovery teachers may serve as resources for the volunteer effort. The Reading Recovery teachers are in frequent contact with parents to assist parents in supporting their child's acquisition of early literacy skills. Program funding comes from a variety of local, state, and federal funds as well as private support. The exact combination depends on how each school district decides to fund the program.

Research: Reading Recovery students are evaluated at the beginning of the school year, at the point when they leave the program, and at the end of the school year. This evaluation data is compared to the average performance of the student's class. In addition, the Reading Recovery teacher evaluates each child's progress daily so that the next day's lesson will build on the previous day's experience and learning. Follow up research indicates that the gains achieved in the first grade are sustained through the fourth grade. Data beyond the fourth grade are not currently available. Reports of the success of the program are available from the RRCNA.

Relations: Most of the promotion of Reading Recovery occurs at the local school board level where the school board adopts the program and supports its implementation in the district. Additional promotional activity relates to the acquisition of state funding for Reading Recovery and other early intervention programs. Coalition building occurs primarily at these levels as well.

Comments: RRCNA has published a Volunteer Literacy Manual which is available to members for $15.00 and to non-members for $20.00. The Manual is not designed to train volunteers to be tutors. It is designed to assist schools and community organizations in organizing the volunteer effort. Sections include the rationale for using volunteers, volunteer roles, volunteer recruitment strategies, training and retaining volunteers, volunteer recognition, and risk management. A list of readings is provided. The resources section includes black and white masters of forms used in volunteer programs (volunteer application, record cards, request forms, schedules, staff needs surveys, sample job descriptions, sample training agendas.) These forms also are provided on Macintosh or PC diskettes for easy adaptation to a school or organization's particular needs. Contact the RRCNA for order information.

ROLLING READERS USA
America Reads Contact: Robert Condon
3049 University Avenue
San Diego, CA, 92104
E-mail: rollread@cts.com Internet Address: www.rollingreaders.org
Telephone: 800-390-READ Fax: 619-296-4099

Participation: A nationwide grassroots volunteer effort serving 250,000 children each week. Major sponsors include Scholastic, American Honda, Reading Is Fundamental, and the Dr. Seuss Foundation. The Rolling Readers programs serve economically disadvantaged children in schools, Head Start Programs, shelters, and community after school programs. And, they serve any child reading below grade level in the first through third grades.

Tutoring: The Rolling Readers Tutoring Program targets children in late first through third grade. Begun in San Diego where 224 schools and 4,000 tutors currently partipate, it has spread throughout California and now this year to selected sites around the nation. The program is available to school districts, school sites, FWS programs, and all America Reads efforts nationwide. Information can be easily accessed from the Rolling Readers homepage: www.rollingreaders.org or by calling our national office at 800-390-READ.

Resources: The Rolling Readers National Office assists its chapters and participating programs affiliated with America Reads by providing technical support in areas such as: Program Start-Up; Volunteer Recruitment, Training, Management, Appreciation; Tutor Training of Trainers; Program Evaluation; and Program Publicity.

Research: The Rolling Readers Tutoring Program design has built in placement and evaluation materials to allow for accurate assessment of student reading level progress. Additionally, for area-wide programs the Rolling Readers volunteer management database is available to track your volunteers.

Relations: We have helped our chapters publicize their programs with an eye toward volunteer generation. Most effective are local campaigns with volunteer spokespersons. These are a community call to action. With national publicity, as when Dear Abby wrote about our program last year, we refer calls into our national hotline out to local chapters.

Comments: Rolling Readers is proud to be a member of the President's Coalition for the America Reads Challenge and a commitment maker to America's Promise, the effort led by General Colin Powell. We are happy to work with any organization whose goal is to assure that all youngsters in their community can read well.

TIME WARNER INC.
America Reads Contact: Virginia McEnerney
75 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY
E-mail: virginia.mcenerney@twi.com Internet Address: pathfinder.com/corp/ttr/
Telephone: 212-484-6410 Fax: 212-484-6417

Participation: Time Warner supports the America Reads Challenge through its operation of Time To Read (TTR), the nation's largest corporate-sponsored volunteer literacy program for children and adults. Through Time To Read, 320 partnerships have been established with businesses, schools, colleges, government and community organizations, prisons, churches and worksites to operate TTR at 280 locations in 85 cities in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

Tutoring: Time To Read trains volunteers and pairs them with learners at three levels-children in grades 2-6, adolescents in grades 7-12, and adults. There are currently 4,000 volunteers tutoring and mentoring 15,800 learners. Time Warner employees, college students, AmeriCorps members, seniors, corporate and community volunteers serve as TTR tutors in weekly tutoring sessions with learners who are recruited through schools, community organizations or the workplace.

Resources: Time To Read supplies tutors and learners with a customized curriculum developed by Time Warner and supplemented by an array of Time Warner products which are used as teaching tools-magazines, music videos, comics, scripts and audiobooks. Time Warner sponsors all Time To Read sites where any of its subsidiaries or divisions partner with a local community group or school. TTR is a not-for-profit program. The complete program is available to corporate sponsors and government agencies at the actual cost ($175 per learner). Schools and organizations who qualify for tax deductible contributions under Section 501(c)(3)of the IRS Code and who wish to participate without a corporate sponsor pay $125 per learner. There must be a minimum of 20 learners; materials may not be purchased separately.

Research: Independent evaluations are conducted biennially. In the most recent evaluation, learners reported they read better (90%), enjoy reading more (89%) and understand what they read (92%). Almost all tutors (98%) enjoyed their personal interaction with learners. Tutors also gained satisfaction from seeing their learners progress and from being involved in promoting literacy (95%).

WOMEN'S AMERICAN ORT
America Reads Contact: Naomi Zeitman
315 Park Ave. South
New York, New York 10010
E-mail: waort@waort.org Internet Address: www.waort.org
Telephone: 800-51-WAORT Fax: 212-674-3057

Participation: Women's American ORT is a national membership Jewish organization which supports the global ORT network of scientific, technological and vocational schools and programs, helps to strengthen the fabric of Jewish life, and advocates on behalf of quality education, democratic values and human rights.

Tutoring: Currently more than 1,000 Love Reading kits have been distributed nation-wide and more than 20 Women's American ORT Chapters are participating in the Love Reading campaign. Different Chapters provide different reading services and programs to youngsters in kindergarten through the sixth grade in communities throughout the country. Some Chapters have book drives while others provide reading programs in their community centers and schools.

Resources: All volunteers are supplied with Love Reading kits, which include reading tips, activities, a resource list, state literacy hotlines and an extensive list of children's books to choose from. Any person interested in our Love Reading program can receive a kit by calling the national office at 800-51-WAORT, ext 267

Research: We are tracking the success of our Love Reading campaign by having the Chapters provide updates and status of their services to their communities. It is our goal to follow the success of each recipient of our Love Reading kit.

Relations: Broadway and television stars have been spreading the word in Love Reading radio public service announcements since 1995. This year's PSAs star Jerry Stiller of Seinfeld fame and Anne Meara, his wife and comedy partner. Women's American ORT advocates on behalf of quality education in partnership with several organizations throughout the country. Recently, we joined forces with Mentoring USA. Our first national book drive will take place at our Triennial Convention in Washington, D.C., in July. All books will be donated to Mentoring USA participants, including schools, community centers and after-school programs. Many Women's American ORT Chapters publicize their community service outreach in their local newspapers.

-###-

[ALABAMA]