Why Do Customers Love
Reading Horizons Elevate®?

More than using a reading intervention aligned with standards and research, you want a program that works for your students. Luckily, you don’t have to take our word for it. Explore the videos, case studies, news articles, and testimonials below to see why educators like you choose Reading Horizons Elevate® for their students.

A ‘Whole Child’ Approach to Afterschool Education

I am the senior director of program operations for By The Hand Club For Kids, a Chicago-based afterschool program that serves 1,360 kids at five locations in four different neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods, kids face challenges such as poverty, gang violence, and a dropout rate as high as 60 percent. (Last year, Chicago saw more murders than Los Angeles and New York City combined.) Our mission is to offer the children in these neighborhoods the support they need to reach the potential we know they can achieve. As a result, our program has a 100 percent high school graduation rate (compared with a rate of about 65–70 percent in Chicago Public Schools). Also, 95 percent of our kids attend college.

We partner with Chicago Public Schools to identify kids who are falling behind, which usually means they have all D’s and F’s in school, as well as frequent tardies and absences. We bus these kids to our location after each school day. Buses are one of our major expenses, but a completely necessary one, as it’s not safe for our kids to cross neighborhood lines because of the gang activity. School funding may mean that parents need to work multiple jobs, or teachers may have larger class sizes, limiting the amount of time they can devote to individual students. In these areas, afterschool programs can help offer extra, often crucial, support. As of 2014, 18% (10.2 million) of U.S. children were enrolled in an afterschool program.