Buffalo Creek Literacy Project

Unless notified otherwise by your tutor:

If Stokes County Schools are closed for inclement weather, Buffalo Creek will be closed as well.

If Stokes County Schools are on a delayed schedule or an early dismissal schedule, Buffalo Creek will not operate in schools.  Your tutoring outside of school on those days will be canceled if your scheduled tutoring time falls before school opens on a delayed day or after students are released on an early dismissal day.

You can get information on Stokes County Schools’ delays and closings on our local news channel (WXII). We will also post our closing information on WXII.

88% of people who don’t graduate from high school were struggling readers in the third grade.

Both nationwide and in North Carolina, only 32% of fourth graders were proficient in reading.

Students who are identified as poor readers by the end of their first grade year rarely obtain even averge reading ability.

Since COVID, the number of children who are stuggling to read has grown from about 1 in 5 to about 1 in 3. Here is a link to a podcast, which recently aired on NPR, that explains part of the problem. For parents of a struggling reader, it is well worth the 50 minutes it will take to listen to it. It is very enlightening.

• Nationwide, on average, only 79% of U.S. adults are literate in 2022.

• 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022.

• 54% of adults have a literacy level below 6th grade.

• Low levels of literacy cost the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.

• On average, nationwide, 66% of 4th-grade children in the U.S. could not read proficiently in 2013.

• 85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading.

• 60% of people in American prisons can’t read.

• 75% of people on welfare can’t read.

References

1. U.S. Department of Education Data Points Adult Literacy in the United States

2. NCES Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies

3. Digest of Education Statistics 2018

4. Literacy Project – 30 Key Child Literacy Stats Parents Need to Be Aware of

We are proud and humbled to have received the 2022 Duke Energy Citizenship and Service Award. Thank you to the King Chamber of Commerce and Duke Energy.

From a student who has completed our program:

“I want to thank Buffalo Creek.  It has been great for me.  I was sent through school just to get by and nobody cared. So at 57 and hard of hearing, Jeff Pratt and Buffalo Creek helped me when I didn’t know where to turn.  It is great to have a program and people that care.  Thanks Buffalo Creek.”

Thank you to The Winston-Salem Foundation (Bill Johnson Trust to Benefit Stokes County) for a generous grant which will help us pay for our Reading Horizons software renewals.  Thanks to gifts like this we are able to continue our work.

A huge thanks to the Dollar General Literacy Foundation for a $3,000 adult literacy grant which will enable us to double the number of adults we are able to serve with Reading Horizons software.