Reading Rescue Program | Reading Rescue

The Literacy Trust presents...Reading Rescue
A Literacy Intervention for Struggling Readers

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.