Celebrating Wisconsin Reading Corps' successes in Racine

Helping struggling students learn to read

Wisconsin Reading Corps’ tutor-student teams displayed the hard work being done in Racine Unified schools to improve elementary reading outcomes to state representatives and community leaders this week at Julian Thomas Elementary School.

Wisconsin Reading Corps works with Racine Unified School District, the Racine Community Foundation and Higher Expectations to bring their evidenced-based literacy intervention programs to four Racine Unified elementary schools: Julian Thomas, Knapp, North Park and Roosevelt.

The purpose of the state representatives visit was to display exactly what the state funding for this program is going for - one-on-one intervening literacy programs for struggling readers. Often schools spend a lot of time working with the students who are having the hardest time learning to read. This leaves the students who are falling a bit behind stuck just below their peers in reading. Wisconsin Reading Corps helps those students who are just below their grade levels to get back on track and continue reading at the same levels of their classmates.

The tutors present at Julian Thomas for the visit said they see the increase in confidence Wisconsin Reading Corps students have in their classrooms after they’ve successfully graduated from the intervention program. The data collected by the Wisconsin Reading Corps shows that they have reason to be confident. Students served by Wisconsin Reading Corps demonstrate more than a year’s worth of progress on reading proficiency indicators and studies show that they continue to grow their reading ability at faster rates than their peers who were not served by Wisconsin Reading Corps.

When Higher Expectations was introduced to this program by fellow Strive Together Network partner, Milwaukee Succeeds, we fought hard to bring this evidence-based program into Racine County. Audrey Borland, the Executive Director of Wisconsin Reading Corps, noted just how important these partnerships are to successfully bringing Wisconsin Reading Corps into a school district.

As we see our elementary reading data points rise, we can see the value of Wisconsin Reading Corps in Racine and are excited to see the impact of this evidence-based, data-driven program in the years to come.

To learn more about Wisconsin Reading Corps: click here.