Delaware’s Reading Assist reports its making gains with at-risk students in the First State.
The nonprofit emphasizes high dosage tutoring to at-risk kids across the First State through its school-year, summer, and after-school programs.
Reading Assist CEO Caroline O’Neal explains That high dosage tutoring entails.. “usually about 30-50 hours of tutoring over a school year, and the research also says to be high-quality, high-dosage tutoring, you want to be one-to-one or one-to-two students, utilizing a trained tutor and utilizing an established curriculum.”
O’Neal says Reading Assist is seeing results from its efforts. It reached over a thousand readers for a second straight school year, serving almost 1,200 students in 2022-23. An assessment of 470 students between kindergarten and third grade that received at least one month of high-dosage tutoring last year found 89% reached at least one early foundational reading skill benchmark compared with 70% during the 2021-22 school year.
And in its third year this summer, Reading Assist’s summer program saw 87% of participating students show improvement after just four weeks of tutoring.
Reading Assist CEO Caroline O’Neal expects continued growth as they get into more schools.
“We’ll be able to reach even more elementary schools and work with more students next year. We’re looking at working with probably about 40 elementary schools in the fall - providing them with tutors to embed in their schools.”
That growth is fueled in part by an Accelerate grant which will boost their partnership with Delaware’s Department of Education to serve an additional 280 students in district and charter schools.
