Stephen Curry’s days of playing at Oracle Arena are long over, but the future Hall of Famer is continuing to dish out assists in Oakland.
Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s Eat. Learn. Play. foundation announced on Thursday morning that it is committed to raising and investing $25 million over the next five years to help bridge the literacy gap in Oakland. The investment will provide 10,000 tutoring spots for elementary school students who are behind in reading, giving young children an opportunity to receive one-on-one professional tutoring that they may not otherwise be able to afford.
The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is planning to also invest $25 million in small-group tutoring with a goal of annually serving up to 4,500 students by 2029.
“When we launched Eat. Learn. Play. five years ago, we set out to provide opportunities to ensure every student in Oakland had the resources they need to be healthy and thrive,” said Stephen and Ayesha Curry in a statement. “This commitment is about more than just closing the literacy gap—it’s about giving these kids the confidence to succeed in all areas of life. We’ve seen firsthand the impact this level of tutoring support can have on a child’s development, and it is our hope that we can work to close the literacy gap and encourage reading for a generation of students.”
Last year, the foundation, which recently celebrated its five-year anniversary, commissioned a literacy report titled “Advancing Literacy Efforts in Oakland” to understand the needs of the community. The report concluded that the literacy gap “continues to drive disparities in literacy rates and academic achievement.” Additionally, the report revealed that one-on-one tutoring is consistently very effective yet very expensive. The foundation’s goal is to ensure that cost is not a barrier for thousands of children in Oakland.
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“It was clear to us when we took this on that this was a major crisis,” CEO Chris Helfrich told Bay Area News Group. “We know that if you’re reading at grade level in elementary school, your prospects in school — and in life — dramatically improve.”
According to Helfrich, the majority of tutoring that students receive in OUSD is small-group tutoring, which is geared towards students who are reading at a grade level below standard. While still immensely beneficial, Helfrich added that there are thousands of students in OSUD who are two or three grade levels below standard. For those students, one-on-one tutoring is most beneficial.
Prior to this announcement, Eat. Learn. Play. conducted a pilot program this past spring. The foundation worked with three different tutoring providers — Hoot Reading, Ignite Reading and Open Literacy — to bring tutoring to about 600 students across 18 elementary schools in Oakland. The pilot program validated the belief that there would be a significant return on investment.
“The growth that we’ve seen in some of these kids that we’ve been lucky enough to get to know has been extraordinary,” Helfrich said. “In January at the beginning of the pilot, there was a little girl who said, ‘I don’t like reading because it makes me feel dumb.’ We know that she wasn’t dumb, but she just hasn’t had the support that she needed. You fast-forward to May right as school is getting out and they’re reading entire books with giant smiles on their faces.”
In addition to one-on-one tutoring, the investment is aiming to strengthen small-group tutoring. The foundation will also continue supporting OUSD and local literary partners with “strategic planning, capacity building and technical assistance,” per the release.
