Community Alignment for Reading Excellence
Read to Succeed Buffalo (RTSB) is strategically focused on creating a continuum of aligned, evidence-based, data-driven, professional development literacy supports for teachers of economically disadvantaged children from birth to 3rd Grade. In addition, RTSB is the local affiliate for Vroom, a program supported by the Bezos Family Foundation, that helps parents with affirming and reinforcing activities and tips that inspire positive and brain building interactions with their children.
RTSB's embedded literacy coaching and assessment model is known as CARE (Community Alignment for Reading Excellence). CARE's goal is two-fold: First, to ensure teachers have content, pedagogical knowledge, and data analysis support necessary to teach and guide children's growth so they come to school prepared to learn. Second, to ensure children have access to these highly trained and skilled teachers, and intentional instruction, regardless of the economic status of their family or the neighborhood in which they live.
Click here for more information about the CARE program.
The CARE continuum is an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses the theoretical frameworks of adult learning theory (Knowles, 1980, 1984), implementation research (Fixsen, 2005), and the area of educational foundations that focuses on economically disadvantaged achievement gaps and their connection to early literacy development (Hart, 1995).
CARE's innovative combination of intensive, embedded coaching, content knowledge development, and assessment-based accountability builds on an embedded coaching methodology developed by RTSB thanks to a four-year U.S. Department of Education Early Reading First (ERF) investment.
RTSB’s newest and largest program is the AARP Foundation Experience Corps. RTSB is the program partner with the AARP Foundation for this evidence-based literacy tutoring/mentoring model available in 20 other communities across the country. Experience Corps Buffalo is an intergenerational, evidence-based tutoring/mentoring program that harnesses the social capital of older adults (retirees age 50+) by training and deploying them to tutor/mentor PreK - 3rd grade students who are below grade level in reading. It came to Buffalo though a competitive grant process in 2016 and Read to Succeed Buffalo is the only program partner implementing Experience Corps in New York State.
Click here for more information about the AARP Foundation Experience Corps.