We helped pioneer the use of CUNY Brooklyn College students enrolled in early-childhood literacy courses as literacy tutors for New York City public-school students, utilizing the evidence-based Reading Go (for first- and second-graders) and Reading Ready (for kindergarteners) programs. The pilot, developed by Dr. Katie Pace Miles at Brooklyn College in 2020, attracted significant funder interest and has since scaled into the CUNY Reading Fellows, a multi-million-dollar public/private partnership engaging preservice teachers across 17 CUNY colleges.
The program trains CUNY students as paid or field-placement tutors who deliver one-on-one, high-dosage reading instruction aligned with the science of reading. Lesson plans target the five essential components of literacy: phonemic awareness, phonics (decoding and encoding), fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
Since inception, over 3,000 CUNY students have been trained as Reading Fellows, providing individualized tutoring to more than 9,000 striving readers in NYC public schools. In 2024–25 alone, 728 CUNY tutors served 2,793 students across 66 schools. Results are promising: for example, 42 % of first-grade Reading Go students who were at risk at the start of the program were no longer at risk by year-end, as measured by the STAR Early Literacy assessment.
The CUNY Reading Fellows partnership — supported by CUNY’s Office of the University Dean for Education, NYC Public Schools, the Mayor’s Office Summer Youth Employment Program, Federal Work Study and numerous foundations – remains a model of venture philanthropy that scales a promising pilot into a city-wide system improving early literacy outcomes.
For more on a strategic partnership we created between CUNY Brooklyn College, Reading Go and GO Project, see here.