Chapter 1
Al and Virginia Meadows established the Foundation in 1948 and supported numerous causes they believed in. Coming from a family of educators, with his mother and five sisters being teachers, Al strongly believed in the power of education. Recognizing that reading is fundamental, our grantee Reading Partners showcases that principle.
A message from Reading Partners
Reading Partners’ mission is to help children become lifelong readers by empowering communities to provide individualized instruction with measurable results.
We work in Texas schools to help close the reading achievement gap among youth in high-need communities throughout Dallas and Tarrant counties so that every student has an equitable opportunity to reach their full potential. Our trained community volunteers are dedicated to serving across North Texas, providing one-on-one reading tutoring to the students who need it most.
Over the past 10 years, Reading Partners’ students have shown tremendous responsiveness to our program model. We have trained 6,248 community volunteer tutors and provided over 200,000 tutoring sessions for 6,000 students. Reading Partners has a strong track record of improving student reading outcomes and reducing the number of North Texas children in kindergarten through third grade not reading at grade level, thus helping strengthen our local economy by providing Texas children with skills they need for future success.
Additionally, as an AmeriCorps program, Reading Partners supports the involvement of staff and AmeriCorps members across our North Texas communities. Our team has, individually and as a group, served several other agencies, including food pantries, shelters, and community farms, in a volunteer capacity. To further our impact, Reading Partners North Texas partnered with other Dallas literacy organizations to form Read Up in 2017. Read Up consists of four mission-aligned nonprofit partners working together to ensure all students have equitable access to high-impact, high-dosage reading tutoring. Each member of Read Up provides a menu of literacy intervention and support services. Taken as a whole, Read Up provides a full spectrum of literacy support tools that can be matched to the needs of individual schools for the greatest impact, proving that, by working together, more children in Texas will overcome reading difficulties.
Reading Partners North Texas empowers communities to improve education outcomes for our youngest Texans by using the power of community volunteers and our evidence-based structured curriculum.