New Visions for Public Schools Marshals $1 Million in Philanthropy to Supplement NYC Reads’ Expansion into Secondary Schools

NEW YORK — New Visions for Public Schools today announced positive results in reading from the first two years of its adolescent literacy intervention with 25 schools, demonstrating the promise of implementing dedicated systems for older students who have not yet gotten the literacy support they need.

New Visions for Public Schools will bring its deep expertise in adolescent literacy to 14 middle and high schools across New York City this school year, supported by a new $300,000 grant from The New York Community Trust. The grant will fund professional learning, job-embedded coaching, and data tools that help schools build sustainable systems for identifying and supporting adolescent learners who are not yet reading on grade level. The investment comes as New York City Public Schools expands its NYC Reads initiative — until now focused primarily on elementary and middle grades — more broadly into high schools this school year. The new grant brings the total outside philanthropic investment New Visions for Public Schools has marshalled to supplement NYC Reads over the past three years to $1 million. 

“High school is not too late,” said New Visions for Public Schools President Mark Dunetz. “Every year, thousands of New York City students arrive at ninth grade still developing the foundational reading skills they need to access grade-level content. When a 15-year-old struggles to decode a text, they need a systemic intervention that respects their maturity while addressing their foundational gaps. Adolescent readers can and do make meaningful gains, but schools can’t do this work alone. New Visions is proud to enhance the NYC Reads initiative by marshalling additional philanthropic investment that makes adolescent literacy intervention possible and a priority for more high schools, so we don’t leave these students behind.”

“New Visions is one of the only organizations providing this kind of specialized, secondary-focused literacy support,” said New York Community Trust Education and Scholarships Program Director Kay Holmes. “New Visions takes a systems-level approach to ensure long-term sustainability: engaging teachers and school leaders, centralizing diagnostic data and progress monitoring in the Portal, and focusing on coherence across schools. Increasing literacy is a critical strategy for improving economic outcomes for all New Yorkers, and by including middle and high school students in that focus, we are committed to including all youth in our vision of equitable and thriving communities.” 

Why Adolescent Literacy Requires a Different Approach

The infrastructure of secondary school expects that students arrive already able to read grade-level texts. But in 2026, one in five 8th-grade students in New York City Public Schools scored “well below standards” in English language arts, meaning, as incoming 9th graders, they have not yet received the support they need to access the material to succeed in high school courses.

Many struggling readers have spent years developing workarounds — such as relying on audio versions of texts — that mask literacy gaps rather than close them. Most middle and high school educators are experts in their content areas, but have received little to no professional development in the Science of Reading or research-based literacy strategies. And unlike elementary schools, most secondary schools lack the scheduling flexibility, diagnostic tools, staffing, coaching, or course structures to identify and meet the needs of struggling readers. 


A Track Record of Results

Drawing on more than 10 years of school-level success, New Visions launched its 6-12 Literacy Initiative in fall 2024 with 13 schools in the New Visions Affinity Network, supported by an initial grant of $350,000 from The New York Community Trust and additional grants from the Booth Ferris Foundation and the Simon Brothers Family Foundation. Based on the strength of those early results, the initiative grew to 18 schools in the 2025-26 school year (reaching 25 unique schools in total). The positive results point to what’s possible when schools have the right support in place:

• Among the schools that implemented literacy interventions for ninth graders, seven schools saw the percentage of Tier 1 (most proficient) readers increase by at least 9 points, and six schools saw the percentage of Tier 3 (least proficient) readers decrease by at least 9 percentage points.

• Ten schools saw at least half of their ninth graders meet their individual expected growth targets for the year (among those students who had fall and spring scores).

• At Khalil Gibran International Academy, where more than half of students scored in Tier 3 at the start of the year with no reading intervention program yet in place, New Visions helped the school screen 100% of students and launch seven intervention sections within a single semester — ultimately moving 26% of Tier 3 readers up to Tier 2, and 11% of Tier 2 and 3 readers up to Tier 1, by year’s end.

All 18 schools built new systems for screening, diagnostics, and data-informed decision-making, laying the foundation for sustained, schoolwide change.

Building on Momentum

With this renewed and expanded support from The New York Community Trust, New Visions will deepen its work with 14 schools this school year to deliver its honed approach to adolescent literacy, focusing on both the pedagogy of reading and the logistics of school leadership specifically at the middle school level. The goal is to strengthen middle school literacy infrastructure to transform developing readers into high-school-ready skilled readers. The model includes a year-long professional learning series for teams of teachers and school leaders; job-embedded coaching for both instruction and school-level systems change; and access to customized literacy data tools, integrated into the Portal by New Visions, that help educators translate screener, diagnostic, and program-embedded assessment results into personalized intervention grounded in the science of reading, enabling students to progress toward on-time graduation.

The 14 schools are: 

• Community Health Academy of the Heights 
• The Young Women’s Leadership School of the Bronx
• Bronx Latin High School
• The Young Women’s Leadership School of Brooklyn 
• Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Secondary School for Arts and Technology 
• The Young Women’s Leadership School of Staten Island 
• Frederick Douglass Academy II Secondary School
• Quest to Learn 
• Wadleigh Secondary School For the Performing Arts 
• The Young Women’s Leadership School of Manhattan 
• East-West School of International Studies
• The Young Women’s Leadership School of Queens
• The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria 
• West Bronx Academy for the Future

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About New Visions for Public Schools

For more than 35 years, New Visions for Public Schools has been at the heart of meaningful improvement in New York City public schools and beyond, driving systems-level change to increase educational equity. A nonprofit, New Visions serves as lead partner to an affinity network of 71 NYC secondary schools and provides data infrastructure to schools across the city, with its Portal tool reaching more than 800,000 students in approximately 1,600 schools and 220 family shelters. Learn more at newvisions.org.

About The New York Community Trust

The New York Community Trust is New York’s largest community foundation, serving New York City, Long Island, and Westchester. For more than 100 years, The Trust has brought together the local knowledge and diverse expertise of its team and nonprofit and philanthropic partners to support thriving and equitable communities and help donors champion our region and the causes they love. The Trust makes approximately $200 million in grants each year from its charitable funds set up by individuals, families, foundations, and corporations.

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