Shelby Harris vividly remembers her elementary school teachers bringing stories to life by adapting their voices to match each character. Years later, she credits those teachers for her love of reading. 

As the education coordinator at our Dunlevy Milbank Community Center in Harlem, she has made it her mission to instill that same love of books in a new generation of students.

But after the COVID-19 pandemic, Shelby and her staff noticed a troubling trend – students attending our after-school programs for homework help were reading below grade level. 

“I’d been noticing that a lot of our students, especially after COVID, were struggling really badly when it came to English Language Arts and their reading. We were realizing that even in third grade, they were still reading at a kindergarten level,” she said. 

This trend extends far beyond our community center. Nationwide, 9 million public elementary school students experiencing economic disadvantages are not yet reading at grade level due to societal and educational inequities. In New York City, 52% of students in grades 3-8 are not reading at grade-level proficiency.

At Children’s Aid, we work to break down barriers to success. That’s why, in 2021, we partnered with Reading Partners, an organization dedicated to equitable literacy education. Through this collaboration, tutors provided kindergarten through fourth-grade students with personalized, twice-weekly, 45-minute tutoring sessions.

Seeing the program’s impact, Reading Partners began training Milbank staff in 2023 to deliver tutoring themselves. What makes the program effective, Shelby explains, is its tailored curriculum. 

“This curriculum meets them where they are,” she said. “If they still need help with their letter sounds, it doesn’t matter that they’re a third grader. The lesson will start with letter sounds and will build off of that. Making sure they have that foundation is important.”

Students progress through three levels: emerging readers focus on letter sounds, beginning readers work on forming words and sentences, and advancing readers develop comprehension skills.

The tutors at Milbank have seen measurable growth through student assessments, ELA scores, report cards, and parent feedback. “I’ve had parents tell me, ‘Whatever you’re doing, it’s working,’” Shelby said.

Beyond academics, the curriculum incorporates social-emotional learning, helping students recognize their emotions and develop coping strategies like meditation and deep breathing.

So far, 30 students at the Dunlevy Milbank Community Center have benefited, and Children’s Aid is expanding the program this year to four additional sites: East Harlem Center at Lexington Academy, Samara Community School, Community School 211, and the Frederick Douglass Community Center.

This expansion is possible partly because of funding from The New York Times Communities Fund, a longtime partner of Children’s Aid. 

Over the next two years, we hope to expand the program to serve 100 students, with a long-term goal of reaching 1,000 students across 12 sites by 2027.

“I’ve seen the improvement in my own students, and I know there are plenty of people who need access to programs like these,” Shelby said. “It’s also really beneficial because they get to have that one-on-one attention that they can’t always get in school. This puts them in a position to catch up and bridge that gap.”