#CloseTheGap

This week we celebrate our students' school-year successes with ice cream parties and special books. 

More than one coach has told me this week of milestones achieved and barriers crossed. "My student is reading at Level I now; I'm so excited!" came from one. Another said, "I have become so close to my student - I never expected that at all." 

We are also reminded that, as we reach and teach our students, each child is less likely to contribute to the disturbing and overwhelming achievement gap.

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Still, the achievement gap is real in Asheville and it is formidable. In 2014, only 25% of black students passed end-of-third-grade reading tests, compared to 91% of white students.

In 2010 the Annie E. Casey Foundation's report Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters, affirmed the urgency of elementary school literacy and underscored the Read To Succeed mantra: Through third grade a child learns to read; After third grade a child reads to learn.

Three years after the original report, the Foundation published a follow-up, Early Warning Confirmed with studies that support a strong correlation between poverty and illiteracy. We knew that a child who enters fourth grade reading at grade level is far more likely to graduate from high school than a student who struggles to read. And now the toxic combination of poverty and illiteracy is quantified:

26% of students who are not proficient readers and have lived at least one year in poverty will fail to graduate from high school.

Read to Succeed literacy volunteers work one-on-one with Asheville students who struggle to read and live in poverty. Last year, 60% of our students completed the school year reading at grade level proficiency.

A huge thank you to our coaches and their hard-working students. What a team they make!

Pat Bastian
(wearing my Communications Director hat-of-the-day)

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Please consider making a meaningful volunteer commitment to our community's children.

Click this button for more information on how you can help #CloseTheGap.

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Read To Succeed relies on donors like you to provide specialized one-on-one tutoring to children who are challenged by reading. 

Click here to underwrite R2S training and supplies. Help us #CloseTheGap.

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