>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
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>> Karen Gardner: Hi everyone. I am Karen Gardner. I'm a Senior Executive Director for Reading Partners. I actually am the Executive Director for Washington DC, but I'm here representing my colleagues across the country today. And it's such a pleasure to be with the Library of Congress in the Center for the Book. It's such an honor to be recognized in this way and to have the opportunity to collaborate with all of you today. So as I get started, I'd like for you to just take a moment and think about how different your life would be today if you had not learned how to read proficiently. Think about the opportunities that you have been afforded, your academic success, your career achievements, the ability to know how and where to get resources for yourself and for your family when you've really needed it. The literacy crisis in the United States for our children and for adults is truly an epidemic. We know that 20% of students, fourth grade students from low income homes are currently reading at grade level, only 20%. That's one out of five. And we also know that students who are not on grade level by the fourth grade are four times less likely to graduate from high school on time. So that's why I'm proud to be at Reading Partners where we are leveraging communities across the country to make sure that our students are matched with a cure for this epidemic. We work with 14 cities across the United States. And this past year we served over 11,000 students with its individualized proven model. So how does it work? First of all, we partner with schools, so we are an in-school program. We have a reading center in each of our schools where we provide pullout instruction, one-on-one, utilizing community volunteers as well as a nationwide partnership with AmeriCorps, similar to the Minnesota Reading Corps. Second, we leverage community volunteers, as I mentioned before, and this allows us to multiply the resources that we provide to the community. And third, our program is individualized on meeting each student exactly where they need to be served in order to develop their literacy skills. And as a result, 83% of our students this past year met or exceeded their end of year literacy growth goals. So we know that our program truly works. And this has been proven by three different independent studies that have been done on Reading Partners. The first was concluded in 2014 by MDRC. It was a gold standard research study, randomized control trial study and showed that Reading Partners has a positive and statistically significant impact on improving reading proficiency. And similar to this, APA, not the APA where most of us are familiar with it but Augenblick, Palaich and Associates has conducted a study that's been multiple years in Colorado, as we've launched our program there, that has also shown this positive impact on students who receive Reading Partners in comparison to a comparison group. And this has been particularly true for English language learners. And the third study that we are in the midst of right now through Child Trends in the state of California, we are in year one of two, excuse me. We just concluded year one of two and found, again, the same trend of improving reading proficiency for students that are receiving our program in the state of California. But what I'm particularly excited about with this study is that it's also showing really positive results in social-emotional learning, which we believed was is to be true given the fact that we're connecting caring adults with students, providing that relationship. However, now this study is showing that. It's just really exciting to see. Thank you so much. And please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
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