Reading
Rescue Program
The Literacy Trust, Inc. is directed by Nora Lee Hoover, Ed.D., University
of Florida, where she served on the faculty as a Professor of Language and Literacy
between 1981 and 1998. In the early 1990's Dr. Hoover was invited by several high
poverty schools in Northern Florida to help them implement an early literacy intervention.
By 1996, the program she designed, Reading Rescue,
was under successful implementation in three school districts. In the same year,
her work came to the attention of a donor to the College of Education at the University
of Florida, Mr. Benedict A. Silverman, a Manhattan entrepreneur. Mr. Silverman's
contributions supported the program's implementation and evaluation in demonstration
sites throughout Florida. Presentations by Dr. Hoover and other University of
Florida faculty at national educational conferences disseminated results of the
program, which led to implementation in other locations throughout the south and
Midwest. Reading Rescue is now serving children in 90 schools across seven states.
In 1998, Dr. Hoover resigned her tenured position at the UF College of Education
to head up the not-for-profit charitable foundation, The Literacy Trust, Inc.,
that now sponsors Reading Rescue.
Since
pioneering its first demonstration project in 1993-1994, growth in the number
of Reading Rescue schools has increased exponentially-from one in 1993-1994 to
over 90 in 2003-2004. In evaluations of program effectiveness, Reading Rescue
graduates, who are among the lowest performing 20% of first grade students in
the fall, have scored at the national average on spring administrations of the
Gates - MacGinitie Reading Tests. With Reading Rescue, a school can tutor 2 to
5 times as many students as would be tutored in a typical Reading Recovery program
and at a fraction of the cost. Rescue schools report reductions in the number
of retentions and referrals for special testing and estimate that between 60%
and 80% of Rescue graduates maintain their gains in later years without further
intervention. |
