We believe:

  • With proper intervention, every child has the potential to read.
  • When classroom reading instruction is not successful, other instructional options must be made available.
  • Learning is most successful in a safe, positive, and supportive environment.
  • One-to-one tutoring provides not only reading instruction to a struggling reader but also a consistent and caring mentor, another necessary factor in determining a child's success at attaining academic and personal goals.
  • Teaching children to read is a step toward breaking the cycle of poverty.
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Powerful Readers

How would your options shrink if you couldn't fill out a job application, decipher a bus schedule, compose a resume or take a drivers license test? It's no coincidence that an estimated 1 out 3 juvenile offenders read below 3rd grade level.

Powerful Schools refuses to let struggling young readers stay that way. We provide free reading tutoring & mentoring to students and offer literacy support to their families.

Within a year, 85% of kids are reading at grade level — and many above grade level.

How it works

Intensive training. Powerful Schools recruits and trains tutors from the community, using a proven curriculum developed by Washington Research Institute. Tutors receive 20 hours of training becoming reading specialists. They sign on for a full school year, providing critical consistency.

Learning that Grace needed special help in reading was a huge shock to me. Over the course of this year, I have come to realize what a huge gift she got: one-on-one help, restoration of her confidence, pride in her accomplishment. 
                                                                                                        Mary Elder, parent

Intensive tutoring. Teachers identify K-2 students who are reading below their grade level. The students receive one-on-one tutoring -- 30 minutes a day, four days a week, for 28 weeks. That's 56 hours of tutoring. Private lessons would cost nearly $2,000.

Every one of my kids benefited from Powerful Readers. It is the best intervention I've seen in 17 years of teaching. Keep the program running. 
                                                  Maidi Nickele, 1st/2nd-grade teacher, Orca Elementary

Community support. Powerful Schools also:

  • hosts class and schoolwide readings
  • encourages parents' involvement through family literacy nights
  • gives away 1,000 new and 1,000 used books per year, allowing kids to start their own libraries at home. Donate a book.

Our biggest challenge? For every child selected for tutoring, two more are in need of reading help.

Get involved!

Results

Powerful Readers, developed in 1993, is based on the highly structured, highly successful Reading Recovery program.

Tutors are evaluated each month on lesson delivery, preparedness, behavior management and positive modeling.

Every 10 lessons, students are tested for mastery of letter sounds, sight word, decoding/segmenting and fluency. After successfully passing these master tests, students are eligible for the next level of instruction.

Powerful Schools meets, if not exceeds, its goals. For example, in 2007-08:

  • 81% of first-grade native English speakers met or passed grade-level reading
  • 75% of first-grade ESL (English as a Second Language) students met or passed grade-level reading.
  • 86% of students given consistent tutoring increased their reading level by one grade.
  • 41% increased it by two or more grades.
  • 100% of special-education students showed some gain in reading skills.

Powerful Schools is shrinking the achievement gap at partner schools.