EARLY CHILDHOOD LITERACY

The facts

• Regardless of economic status, about 80 percent of the Asheville City School system’s white students achieve grade-level proficiency; less than 30 percent of black students meet the same benchmark. 
• A  2012 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that "students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave without a diploma than proficient readers."
• A 2009 Northeastern University study found that "students who fail to complete high school are far more likely to be unemployed, a single parent or in prison than those with a high school diploma or college degree."
• Children who read well tend to finish school, complete college, and compete successfully for good jobs.

What we do

• Read To Succeed trains volunteers to be literacy tutors, using a phonics-based, multi-sensory approach.
• Teachers and literacy specialists identify children as early as possible - in kindergarten and first grade - who are below grade level in reading, and refer them to us. 
• These children are matched with trained R2S volunteers for one-to-one sessions during regular school hours.
• Read To Succeed evaluates student progress using school district standardized testing.
• Read To Succeed also evaluates program effectiveness through teacher surveys and principal interviews.

Through third grade, children learn to read.  After third grade, children read to learn.