YES Reading

Infobox Non-profit
Non-profit_name = YES Reading
Non-profit_
founded_date = 2001
location = Milpitas, California
origins =
area_served = San Francisco Bay Area
focus = Children's Literacy
method = One-on-One Tutoring
revenue = $1.2M
endowment =
num_employees = 14
Non-profit_slogan = Inspiring Kids to Greatness
homepage = [http://www.yesreading.org/ yesreading.org] YES Reading is a children's literacy nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In its core program, YES Reading operates Reading Centers at struggling elementary schools in under-served communities where children reading below grade level receive free one-on-one tutoring from volunteers using a structured, research-based curriculum.

YES Reading currently serves more than 500 children each year, with an 87% success rate in helping students measurably narrow the achievement gap. On average, students advance one grade level for every 30 hours of tutoring they receive.

History

YES Reading began at Belle Haven Elementary School in East Palo Alto when members of the community joined together to help students struggling with reading skills. At the time, fewer than 1 in 5 students at Belle Haven could read at grade level and more than 80% of students qualified for the National School Lunch Program. Starting with just three volunteers working in the school library, YES Reading quickly grew to serve more than 50 children at Belle Haven.

After formally incorporating as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, YES Reading began an expansion phase, opening 9 new Reading Centers in Santa Clara County, San Mateo County and Alameda County between 2002 and 2007.

Program Locations

As of November 2007, YES Reading has 10 program locations:

• Belle Haven Community School in Menlo Park, California
• Selby Lane School in Atherton, California
• Mariano Castro Elementary in Mountain View, California
• Horace Mann Elementary in San Jose, California
• Montague Elementary in Santa Clara, California
• College Park Elementary in San Mateo, California
• Berkley Maynard Academy in Oakland, California
• Lighthouse Community Charter School in Oakland, California
• East Palo Alto Charter School in East Palo Alto, California
• Sanchez Elementary School in San Francisco, California

Program

Teachers refer students struggling with reading to the campus YES Reading Center, where they receive the one-on-one attention of a trained volunteer tutor for ninety minutes each week. Tutoring sessions focus on building students’ reading skills in five critical areas of literacy: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. YES Reading’s curricular materials consist of three key components, each of which address different levels of reading ability with curriculum-based, logically-sequenced materials. Upon entry into YES Reading, every student is assessed using the Woodcox-Johnson III diagnostic and placed into one of the three programs depending on the child’s individual needs.

Once a student has reached grade level, he or she may continue to visit the YES Reading Center through the Step II program. Students in this program attend one YES Reading tutoring session a week rather than two. They continue to benefit from one-to-one instruction and help with reading skills, but they become more empowered to take accountability for their own literacy development.

Family outreach is a critical component of YES Reading. Through the Home Connections program, YES Reading aims to invest parents as equal partners in their children’s successful literacy development through family-centered literacy activities and Take Reading Home, a year-round book giveaway program.