Our Vision:

All children in Portland Public Schools who are at-risk for reading failure will learn to read and meet third grade benchmarks.

Our Mission:

Portland Reading Foundation, in conjunction with metropolitan Portland schools, identifies children in the primary grades who are most at-risk for failing to learn to read, and intervenes, providing these children with scientifically based, multi-sensory reading instruction to ensure that each child has the opportunity to become a proficient reader.

Our Approach:

• Partner with elementary schools serving low-income neighborhoods.
• Screen primary students to identify those most at-risk for failing to learn to read.
• Match at-risk students with professional reading specialists.
• Provide one-to-one and small group tutoring sessions three times per week.
• Use phonics-based, systematic multi-sensory strategies to improve fluency, comprehension, spelling, vocabulary, and writing.
• Train paraprofessionals and teachers in multi-sensory techniques that support struggling readers.

Reading is a key to educational success, higher hopes and lifelong achievement.

Failure to read poses serious threat to students’ long-term ability to learn. Risks soar for failure in school, poverty, long-term dependence on public assistance.

Studies by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development recognize that if a child has not learned to read by third grade, he or she will flounder in fourth grade and beyond when the focus moves from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

The Portland Reading Foundation program is unique in that we provide schools in low income neighborhoods with professionally trained and paid reading tutors to provide targeted, systematic, phonics based instruction for children who are failing to learn to read.  Volunteer-based mentoring and tutoring programs cannot provide the expertise needed to help truly struggling readers.  After-school tutoring and the SMART program may encourage students to enjoy books, but do not teach children how to read. For some children, direct personalized instruction is necessary to learn to read.  With large class sizes, teachers cannot provide the one-on-one, systematic instruction struggling readers require.

Portland Reading Foundation recruits retired teachers and other trained reading professionals to work as Reading Specialists with struggling young readers in schools serving low-income neighborhoods.   PRF also trains parents from the school community to become “literacy coaches” who give first graders a “jump start” on learning to read.  Children are tutored three times per week for 30 minutes per session.  Together the PRF team in each school supplements the classroom teaching of reading to ensure that each child has the opportunity to become a proficient reader.

Fall 2009

• Parent tutors chosen by school principal; trained by PRF. 
• First-second graders screened by school to detect those at risk for reading failure.

• Principal, school reading specialist and PRF administrator select students
• PRF pretests to determine which students can be paired together for instruction.
• Supervision and continued training provided by PRF to the parent tutors as they work with their students.
• Senior Remediation Specialist is assigned to work with children in the second and third grades (or above) who are below grade level and need an intensive, skill building remediation program.

Winter 2009 - 2010

• PRF administrator and school staff run assessments to track student progress.
•  Children reaching grade level exit the intervention and more brought into the remediation program.
• Supervision and continued training/troubleshooting by PRF provided to parent tutors.

Spring 2010

• Post testing of all participating students in late May.
• PRF administrator, specialists, parent tutors and school principal meet to analyze test results and evaluate effectiveness of program.

PRF gets results!

Portland Reading Foundation dedicates approximately 7% of direct program costs to performance evaluation of students. In addition to tests administered by the schools themselves, Portland Reading Foundation uses a battery of specialized pre and post tests to identify reading challenges and to track individual students’ progress. First graders participating regularly in the Portland Reading Foundation program typically make one to two years progress on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. Children in third grade and above often make slower progress because of poor self esteem,  poorly developed reading skills that must be “remediated,” and reliance on a “guess and go” approach. Portland Reading Foundation has documented effectiveness with many readers in later elementary grades. Last year at Chief Joseph a 4th grader made 2.2 years growth in spelling and 1.9 years growth in reading of isolated words.  At Humboldt, a 4th grader made 1.7 years growth in spelling and 2.5 years growth in reading isolated words.