A not-for-profit early literacy program founded by wife-and-husband Johns Hopkins researchers Nancy Madden, PhD, and the late Robert Slavin, PhD, has been named an awardee of prestigious New York Times 2022 Holiday Impact Prize.
The Holiday Impact Prize shines a spotlight on the Baltimore-based Success for All Foundation during the important end-of-the-year giving season. The prize, presented by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, and supported by Focusing Philanthropy, is expected to jumpstart charitable donations this year, helping to ensure that children learn to read early and achieve academic success.
The prize provides the Success for All Foundation with a $25,000 “kick start” donation in hopes of inspiring additional individual donations. All gifts go toward helping the organization reach more students, particularly those from disadvantaged circumstances. A donation of just $200, for example, covers the entire annual cost of Success for All for one child.
“The generous donations made through the Holiday Impact Prize will be transformative in the lives of many thousands of children who are just learning to read,” says Nancy Madden, a professor with the Johns Hopkins School of Education, who serves as the not-for-profit’s CEO. “Fewer than 20% of third graders in low-income families read at grade level. Donations through this prize will help us bring the valuable gift of reading to many, many young people nationwide.”
The focus on efforts to make up for learning loss are especially critical this year as the nation grapples with report after report that outline steep learning declines during the COVID pandemic. The latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress reveal historically large drops in math and reading scores for U.S. public-school students. The NAEP compared the performance of nine-year-olds who took the assessment in 2022 with data from early 2020, before COVID. In two years, the average reading score fell by five points, the largest drop since 1990.
That’s where Success for All comes in. Founded in 1987 as a program at a JHU research center, Success for All’s mission is to develop and disseminate research-proven educational programs to ensure that all students from all backgrounds achieve the highest level of academic success.
For decades, the not-for-profit has helped administrators and teachers transform elementary schools to help all students, regardless of social or economic background, achieve grade-level performance in reading. It uses an innovative, research-proven approach that combines cooperative learning with quarterly assessments, high-dosage tutoring, and family engagement into a powerful program to help young students learn to read.
Focusing on the key first three years in school, Success for All has been shown to cut racial achievement gaps in literacy by half. And, by fifth grade, students in the program are a full grade level ahead of their peers at similar schools without support from the organization.
Noted reformers, Madden and Slavin began their collaboration in the 1970s, and continued their work through the Center for Research and Reform in Education at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, pioneering numerous groundbreaking studies and designing equally transformative programs that put evidence and theory into practice to help students in all kinds of communities become better students.
Slavin and Madden shared a passion for research in schools and improving student achievement. Together, they conducted basic research and turned it into comprehensive programs and then worked directly with educators to establish and disseminate their methods, drawing international attention to their work and to the Johns Hopkins School of Education.
Nicholas Kristof has written an annual “holiday gift guide” column since 2009, bringing much-needed attention to little-known organizations working to make the world a better place. Donation opportunities remain open through Jan. 31, 2023.
“There is broad recognition that we are underperforming in education and that a lot of kids are being left behind, but there isn’t a lot of agreement on the diagnosis or remedy,” says Kristof. “The Success for All Foundation was selected because of its unique research and metrics-based approach to transforming schools and cutting literacy gaps. A donation will allow the foundation to spread the joy and power of reading to more children.”
Topics: Faculty and Staff, School of Education, Fuel Discovery