51风流

When was the last time you were hooked on a TV show? Before that first episode reaches you, its audience, it has to win over the network or streaming service that will produce the series.

For example, the two-part pilot of the series听Lost听from 2004 is still remembered as one of the听听听. The head of ABC, Lloyd Braun, had听听to听create a show combining elements of听Cast Away,听Survivor,听Gilligan鈥檚 Island, and听Lord of the Flies. Some laughed it off, but his idea caught on with a senior VP, who ordered a script that was pitched and rejected, and eventually rewritten by someone else, ultimately becoming the most expensive pilot produced up until that time. Unfortunately for Braun, he was fired before the broadcast, but his idea and the resulting process paid off: the show gripped viewers for many seasons to come, won numerous awards, and buoyed the network鈥檚 overall success.

Reading Partners鈥� pilot process may not be quite as sensational, but the payoff is no less exciting. Every year, we are piloting new innovations that will further听our mission鈥攅mpowering students to become lifelong readers. Some pilots are meant to test a change that we know we want to make, but we need feedback before rolling it out. Others are more experimental, helping us discover if the innovation is successful and scalable, needs refinement, or should be discarded for another idea instead.

There are two different ways a new program idea comes about.

• One is through an exciting opportunity: we connect with another organization that is aligned with our mission and we believe a partnership can move our work forward together.
• The other is through identifying a challenge and brainstorming solutions: what is a barrier to our success, and which of these ideas do we want to try to address it?

In either case, we鈥檙e always thinking about our mission in terms of impact and reach. Any new idea we take on has to do at least one of two things: 1) deepen impact on student learning; 2) broaden our reach to more students. That way, we ensure we avoid mission drift and deliberately move towards our vision: a future where all children in the US have the reading skills necessary to reach their full potential.

Once an idea is chosen, the pilot process begins!

Here are the four steps we take to implement the pilot:

1. First, clearly define the goals: how will we evaluate whether and to what degree this innovation extended our impact and/or our reach?
2. Next, identify who will participate in the pilot. The national Reading Partners team clearly defines what capacity will be needed from participating regional teams along with what support they can expect to receive. This ensures everyone involved knows what to expect when they opt in, creating a truly collaborative process.
3. Then, meet regularly to share how we are tracking towards the defined goals and share any feedback throughout the pilot term.
4. Finally, determine whether or not the goals were attained, and whether or not it is feasible to scale the pilot. If the answers are yes, we鈥檙e likely to move forward. But if either answer is no, we may adapt the idea and try again, or we may leave it behind to make room for other ideas in its place. The results are then shared across the organization along with any next steps.

Let鈥檚 look at a couple of examples of pilots from the past

As a way to boost both impact and reach, the literacy lead pilot sought to听recruit听AmeriCorps听members serving as full-time tutors. Literacy leads were positioned to tutor students with the largest gaps, who would benefit the most from more individualized instruction. Furthermore, they were deployed to schools where low volunteer recruitment made reaching student enrollment goals challenging.听Baltimore听was the first region to bring literacy leads into their reading centers in 2015-2016, and four more regions joined the pilot the following year. Throughout the pilot years, teams finetuned the organizational structure to best support this new role. The pilot process officially ended in 2018; currently, two-thirds of our regions have literacy leads on their teams, and students tutored by them receive more hours of tutoring overall.

Not all pilots result in wide-scale implementation. Tutoring with the Lightning Squad is an example of a pilot that came about through an exciting opportunity to deepen our impact and expand our reach using a digital platform with student pairs. While there were some meaningful results from this pilot, ultimately the regions who implemented this idea came to the conclusion that these results did not outweigh the capacity required to run the program. Yet the lessons that were learned during this pilot helped us to design our own digital curriculum and platform, RP Connects, in a way that complemented our traditional, print-based program.

Now, let鈥檚 look at the pilots we are running this year!

1. PreK Curriculum Pilot
   1. The problem: PreK students need literacy support
   2. The proposed solution: Adapt our Emerging Readers curriculum to accommodate younger readers
2. Litlab.ai
   1. The problem: Some Beginning Readers students need more phonics practice
   2. The proposed solution: Use AI-generated decodable texts to make repeated practice more motivating
3. Three 30-minute sessions per week
   1. The problem: There are limited time blocks for students to be pulled into reading centers during the school day
   2. The proposed solution: Shift from two 45-minute sessions per week to three 30-minute sessions that better fit into the school鈥檚 intervention schedule
4. Revised scheduling process
   1. The problem: Scheduling tutor and student pairs is a complex process with a high administrative burden and many potential communication pitfalls between multiple teams
   2. The proposed solution: Create a technological solution to minimize administrative burden and make scheduling a more automated process

I asked each pilot lead three questions.

Angela Padron, national director of curriculum and instruction, is leading our preK curriculum pilot:

1. How did this pilot come about?听Last year, the听South Carolina听region wanted to enroll some preK students in the Reading Partners program using materials and lessons from our Emerging Readers (ER)听curriculum. I created another set of lessons based on the ER program that would accommodate the preK age group that focused mostly on listening skills and phonological awareness skills. I worked together with Sarah Buss (national program director) and Kelly Clouser (South Carolina program director) to review and adjust as needed. We also discussed the most appropriate time allotment for this younger age group, strategies for multilingual learners, and goals we wanted for the students.
2. What prompted you to lead this pilot?听Because I had worked on this, and because students in South Carolina showed progress, I was asked to help move the pilot forward so that the program could eventually be implemented in more regions.
3. What do you hope to learn from this pilot?听I would like to see if these preK lesson plans continue to be effective, or what adjustments might be needed for all regions. In addition, I would like to see the rate at which students who have enrolled in Reading Partners at the preK level develop their skills in kindergarten and beyond compared to students who are not enrolled in the preK program. I believe the earlier the intervention, the better chance a student has to progress.

Jen Joyce, VP of national programs, is leading our听听pilot:

1. How did this pilot come about?听We have heard repeatedly that students need additional books for practice when learning to decode as they get bored if they have to read the same books more than once.
2. What prompted you to lead this pilot?听Finding high quality, diverse, instructional texts that are aligned with our scope and sequence (鈥淩oadmaps鈥�) can be challenging, and so finding an innovative alternative for students is what brought us to this opportunity and pilot.
3. What do you hope to learn from this pilot?听We hope to see if having these books available improves the experience for students. Down the line, we would also look into using litlab.ai to expand Take Reading With You (i.e. our program that invites students to choose a book from the reading center to keep). We hope to understand what is needed to successfully manage this at the regional and site level and what the burden would be for scaled implementation.

Rebecca Deville, national program manager, is leading our three 30-minute session pilot:

1. How did this pilot come about?听In some regions, the traditional tutoring schedule of 45 minutes, twice a week has limited access to programming in many schools. It has become more of a challenge to pull students from the classroom with tighter intervention schedules at schools. In response to our school partners鈥� needs, we adapted our approach by piloting three 30-minute sessions.
2. What prompted you to lead this pilot?听This pilot originated from our ongoing commitment to innovate and improve our educational practices. I was asked to lead this pilot because one of the regions in my portfolio piloted this on a very small scale in FY23 and we decided to formalize it as a pilot offering this year.
3. What do you hope to learn from this pilot?听I aim to gather insights on how to effectively implement and scale three 30-minute sessions across other regions. Understanding the impact on tutors and their coaching practices is also a key focus, as it directly influences student success.

Simone Moore, sr. program operations associate, is the program team lead for our scheduling pilot with the community engagement team:

1. How did this pilot come about?听The initial pilot was the product of my colleagues Clara and Jonathan who had recently joined the national team after multiple years on the New York and Tulsa community engagement teams, respectively. They brought together innovations on scheduling from their former roles to create the national scheduling pilot.
2. What prompted you to become a leader on this pilot?听After the first year, the community engagement teams that had led the pilot realized that program teams needed more representation鈥攖he scheduling process needed to be collaborative to be efficient and successful. I was added to the pilot lead team in early spring to offer more consistent guidance from the national program perspective. Sarah is the primary national program representative/decision maker; I serve as an integral part of the project team working on the documentation, resources, and tools that pilot teams will use throughout the year.
3. What do you hope to learn from this pilot?听I hope that we will be able to learn the best ways to help regional program and community engagement teams to work collaboratively and really feel shared ownership over the scheduling process so that we can have an easier time getting students and tutors paired efficiently. This would hopefully help both teams achieve their annual goals and improve cross team relationships in a variety of ways. I also hope to learn more about what information we are not currently capturing during the tutor onboarding/student enrollment processes that would make it easier to get our tutors where we need them most and get students with the highest need enrolled in Reading Partners sooner.

Reading (and learning) matters

Reading Partners鈥� mission and vision is central to all the work that we do, and that includes our program innovations. Through the pilot process, we are living out several of our听core values: reading matters, big challenges are our thing, data drive decisions, and together we are better. We are also living into our alignment with the听science of reading听by being open to new information and research; our prioritization of social emotional learning by holding a growth mindset; and our commitment to racial equity, diversity, and inclusion by being responsive to the needs of the communities where we serve and fostering a collaborative, inclusive working environment. Every member of our team is committed to their own learning and growth so that they can better equip communities to fulfill our mission.

We hope you have enjoyed this peek behind the curtain. Whether you are a Reading Partners volunteer, donor, parent, or another important role, we could not do this work without you. We want you to know just how much we appreciate your support, your openness to new ways of doing things, and your honest feedback throughout the process.

Stay tuned for future posts about other major innovations like our ever-evolving Reading Partners Connects digital platform and programs with community based organizations 鈥減owered by Reading Partners.鈥� We鈥檒l also share the results of these pilots at the end of this program year.