Literacy Partners
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our innovative approach is anchored around the power of storytelling. By arming parents with language skills and literacy tools they need to emotionally connect with their children and with one another, our students discover the universality of their struggles and the hope that they can achieve their educational and vocational goals.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
English for Parents
Group English classes for parents of young children
The 36-week program will help you improve your everyday English skills. The class also helps with parent-child bonding and helps parents read with their children more often. The program includes: classes with a highly-skilled teacher, one-on-one conversation practice with a native English-speaking partner, and practice using online tools.
Reading for Adults
One-on-one reading help for parents of young children and other adults
We focus on the basics of reading to help adults achieve their reading goals. We help parents feel more comfortable reading with their children. We also work with adults who don’t have children who want to improve their reading for other reasons. You can join a class that meets weekly online and work with a tutor one-on-one to improve your reading skills.
Leadership for Education and Parenting
LEAP is an innovative program for young adults seeking to achieve their high school equivalency (HSE) degree. LEAP is a seminar series focusing on academic and parenting support, leadership and child development, and building a community for students to mentor and support each other. The goal is not just for students to achieve their degree, but to build life and parenting skills to help their whole family succeed.
Books of Their Own
Books of Their Own (BOTO) distributes 15 age-, gender-, and culturally-relevant new books to the children of our students each semester. Distribution of these books is accompanied by mentorship and coaching from our teachers on the importance of reading with your child. For most of our nearly 1,000 participants, these books represent a number of “firsts” -- the first time they’ve ever owned books and had a home library and the first time in which the characters and storylines reflect their own lives and experiences.
La Fuerza de Familias Latinas
Workshops for Spanish-speaking parents
Spanish-language workshops help parents and caregivers support their child’s early learning. Parents watch video clips from Univision’s hit telenovela, La Fuerza de Creer, and discuss important issues related to parenting.
Where we work
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of students enrolled
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
People of African descent, People of Latin American descent, Caregivers, Parents, Immigrants and migrants
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This includes students in our ESOL and high school equivalency/LEAP, Basic Literacy classes, as well as our English conversation groups.
Program Quality
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
English for Parents
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
100 percent of students would recommend our program to a friend or family member.
Benefit to Children
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
English for Parents
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
92 percent of students report that what they learned in our classes benefited their children, who demonstrated 68% more growth on early childhood development assessments compared to their peers.
Number of books distributed
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Infants and toddlers, Caregivers, Families
Related Program
Books of Their Own
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
We provide our families with age- and culturally relevant books each year.
Number of youth who increased their weekly hours of homework/reading
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
English for Parents
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
English for Parents students report a 76% increase in daily reading with their children.
Number of students showing improvement in test scores
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
English for Parents
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
In 2020, 83% of students graduated to next level based based on pre- & post-testing results. Children of these students outperformed their peers on Head Start assessments of early lit by 21%.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Literacy Partners envisions a future in which all parents have the tools to achieve success for themselves and a better future for their children. We seek a world in which children grow up in families with access to the resources and support they need to not just survive but to actually thrive.
Our immediate goal is to ensure families' economic stability and to close the achievement gap for children from low-income immigrant children before they even begin school.
Extensive research shows that low-income New Yorkers who struggle to read, write, or speak in English face daunting barriers in advancing their family's economic security. Low literacy and limited English proficiency not only limit job prospects but make it harder to access health care, education, and other essential resources. Often, significant consequences of parental illiteracy are felt by the next generation: children whose parents cannot read to them, help them with their homework, or interact effectively with teachers and doctors face substantial educational delays.
Parental education plays a critical role in ending multi-generational illiteracy, poverty, and low educational attainment. Therefore, Literacy Partners provides intensive English language and literacy instruction for parents, combined with child-development information and support that helps our adult students promote their children's healthy development and school readiness.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Literacy Partners provides:
• English for Parents classes
• English discussion groups
• Adult basic literacy program
• Parenting workshops for young adults seeking to achieve their high school equivalency degree
• Learning Together workshops for parents to help them improve their children's early literacy development
• Educational media in both English and Spanish accompanied by facilitated workshops and toolkits
The centerpiece of our work is the delivery of intensive English language and literacy instruction for parents. We provide a rigorous curriculum that integrates English language, numeracy, and digital literacy with the parenting skills our students need to pass on their learning to their children. Our teachers work to boost students' confidence in using these new skills to achieve goals in the key domains of their lives: parenting, work, health care, finances, and communication with their children's schools.
Our classes are taught by full-time professional educators who are extensively trained in adult literacy, English language instruction, and child development. Unlike typical literacy classes, our classes meet 10 to 12 hours a week over a 36-week academic year. We provide a higher- and a lower-level class for parents to accommodate various literacy levels and language abilities. Lessons focus on written and verbal English language skills, in combination with projects that emphasize family conversation and reading. Our teachers continually coach their students to apply the literacy and language skills learned in the classroom to their lives outside of class and help them gain the confidence they need to navigate New York City's subways, schools, banks, and health care system.
Teachers also coach parents to obtain library cards, email accounts, government identification, and health insurance and teach them to use the internet so that they can access the full range of information needed to succeed as parents, workers, and community members.
Our classes are situated within Head Start preschool locations, which serve high-need, under-served families. Parents drop off their children at Head Start preschool and then just walk down the hall to attend our morning classes. For parents with children who are too young for Head Start, we offer supervised reading and play time for toddlers while our classes are being held.
Based on extensive research showing that having books available at home significantly boosts children's early reading and future academic success, Literacy Partners provides a library of at least 15 age- and culturally appropriate books, yearly, to each of our students' children.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Literacy Partners teachers, who carry out the fundamental work of our organization, are master's-prepared full-time instructors with expertise in English for speakers of other languages, adult education, and early child development.
A committed corps of volunteers augments the work of our teachers by providing one-to-one tutoring support to our adult students.
Our CEO, Anthony Tassi, came to Literacy Partners from the New York City Mayor's Office of Adult Education, where he worked to strengthen and coordinate the city's adult literacy programs under the Bloomberg Administration. He was previously a health policy advisor for the City of New York, where he came to understand that improving basic literacy of the population would have a considerable impact on health indicators. Anthony is responsible for having redirected the mission of Literacy Partners toward education for low-income immigrant parents to improve the economic stability of two generations. He is the co-creator of the Emmy Award–winning We Speak NYC video series to help immigrants learn English.
In addition, Literacy Partners' staff features two program directors with extensive experience in adult literacy and data, to ensure that the organization uses the data we receive from our own assessments and those of our Head Start partners to ensure that programs are continually adjusted based on solid, scientific information.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Literacy Partners relies heavily on data to help us continually evaluate and refine our program. Results to date show that our dual-generation approach is working:
• 94% of our parent-students make measurable academic progress each year, and two-thirds advance to the next academic level. Their confidence in using English to solve problems in everyday contexts, from reading traffic signs to communicating with their children's doctors, increases substantially.
• 99% of students say that our classes helped improve their English, and 100% would recommend the class.
• They transfer the benefits to their children immediately: 72% of parents in our English classes increased the frequency with which they read to their children - a key predictor of children's language development and school readiness. 97% of parents say their child benefited directly from what they learned.
• Most compelling, the children of Literacy Partners students, who tend to start preschool well behind their classmates on most measures, advance at a quicker pace than their peers, making an average of 67% more progress, from the beginning to the end of the year, on early-childhood assessments than than their Head Start peers. Children of our students outperformed their peers on Head Start assessments of early literacy by 21%.
Our classes go beyond the traditional definition of literacy education, helping parents acquire the skills they need to thrive in New York City, whether navigating the health care system, finances, the school system, transportation, or job searches.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
-
How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
-
Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive
-
What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, We don’t have the right technology to collect and aggregate feedback efficiently, Staff find it hard to prioritize feedback collection and review due to lack of time
Financials
Unlock nonprofit financial insights that will help you make more informed decisions. Try our monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights?
Learn more
about GuideStar Pro.
Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Literacy Partners
Board of directorsas of 03/07/2022
Katharine Raymond Hinton
Journalist and Political Consultant
Term: 2019 - 2023
Peter Brown
BLJ Worldwide
Alina Cho
CBS Sunday Morning
Kath Raymond Hinton
Journalist and Political Consultant
Leslie R. Klotz
ASPCA
Lawrence A. Jacobs
Mintz & Gold
Ianthe Dugan
Journalist
Neal Goff
Egremont Associates
Mark Gurevich
Maverick Capital
W. Ross Honey
Octave Group
Courtney Lewis
Marshall Wace North America, LP
Cynthia McFadden
NBC News
Sabastian V. Niles
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
Paul Parikh
Signet Jewelers
Jordan Pavlin
Alfred A. Knopf
Hope Pingree
Cover New York
Mark Subias
United Talent Agency
Todd Larsen
LexisNexis
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
-
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data