Talbot Mentors’ Kentavius Jones on Talbot’s New Reading Alliance

America’s reading crisis is hard to overstate. It has become a national failure hiding in plain sight, with only about 30 percent of fourth graders reaching NAEP proficiency in reading and roughly 40 percent performing below even a basic level. That means millions of children are moving through school without the one skill that makes every other subject possible. Scores declined again after 2022 and remain below pre-pandemic levels, with no state posting gains in fourth-grade reading.

Similar concerns are evident closer to home in Talbot County, where teachers are doing all they can to strengthen students’ reading and comprehension skills. But there are limits to what can be accomplished in a standard school day. That is where Talbot Mentors has stepped in, partnering with the New York–based READ Alliance, co-founded in 2002 by Oxford residents Al and Marty Sikes.

READ Alliance uses a simple but powerful model that puts trained, paid high school students to work as one-on-one reading tutors for younger children in kindergarten through second grade. These Teen Leaders, often from the same neighborhoods and schools as the students they serve, deliver structured, evidence-based lessons in a consistent, supportive setting. The results are striking, with more than 85 percent of participating children gaining over a full grade level in reading. At the same time, the teens build workforce skills, confidence, and leadership through what is often their first job. In a moment when fewer than one third of U.S. students read at grade level, the program stands out as a practical, community-driven approach that benefits both students and tutors.

Talbot Mentors launched a pilot of this model in February, working with 31 Talbot County students and more than a dozen high school mentors. As Executive Director Kentavius Jones noted in a recent Spy interview, early results are already mirroring the success seen in other communities.

Jones stopped by the Spy studio last week to talk about those early outcomes and the promise of a model that offers a clear path forward in addressing one of the region’s most pressing educational challenges.

Talbot Mentors will also screen the acclaimed documentary “Sentenced” on May 6. Told through the experiences of ethnically diverse adults and children who never learned to read, the film offers a powerful and deeply human look at how literacy can break cycles of generational poverty.