POLICY & ADVOCACY
Creating a space where black and brown students thrive in education!
OUR ARIZONA STUDENTS & EDUCATORS NEED DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE SCHOOLS.
TRA fights tirelessly for the diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging of Black & brown students and educators by rebuilding Arizona's education pipeline.
Studies show that African American men and Latinos educators benefit all children. However, African Americans make up only 4% of the education workforce in Arizona. Across the state, more than 585,321 Black & brown students are in classrooms without a Black educator. It is our mission to not only to increase the number of students who are literate by the end of third grade; but also, it is to transform our school environments to better attract and retain male educators of color.
POLICY & ADVOCACY ADVANCES
The Reading Alliance forms partnerships to advocate for diversification of the education pipeline, promoting teacher diversity and cultural pedagogy & didactics at all government levels. We welcome & encourage opportunities to further combined efforts advocating for educational advancement.
Jevin D. Hodge, President
Jevin Hodge stands as a proud advocate for local communities. He has been involved in policy advising and campaign management at the municipal, state, and federal level. Including advising top level government officials and key business leaders on how to best engage millennials.
An Arizona native, Jevin is adept at working with community leaders and elected officials, primarily focusing on how to increase civic engagement among all Arizonans. Professionally, Jevin serves as the National Engagement Coordinator for LINK Strategic Partners. LINK Strategic Partners is a national strategic communications and stakeholder engagement firm headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Civically, he serves as the Vice – Chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party, Chairman of Board of Directors for Booker T. Washington Child Development Center in Phoenix, AZ, and Chairman of Board of Directors for the Tempe Union High School Education Foundation, in Tempe, AZ. Additionally, he is the former Vice Executive Director of The Manifesto Project, an Arizona-based non-profit working to answer the question: How does Arizona retain and develop its young professionals?
Third Grade Reading
Reading is the foundational skill for all future learning, and the ability to read by the end of third grade is a pivotal milestone for a child’s future academic advancement. Research shows that a child’s third grade reading level is a a strong predictor of how well a student performs in high school, whether or not they graduate, if they go on to college and for minority children; if they go to prison!
Data supports that many companies in the United States are not able to find qualified employees, this is a major issue for our economy as we grow year over year.
How can we correct this? Research shows that reading is one of the most commonly and intensively used skills among all types of jobs across the U.S., even those jobs that don’t require training or education after high school.
In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show Arizona’s results went down slightly which puts Arizona slightly below the national average. NAEP reading and math tests are administered every other year and results focus on trends in data over time, as opposed to a snapshot from any one year. The percentage of students in Arizona who performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level was 31 percent in 2022. This percentage was not significantly different than in 2019 (31 percent) and was greater than in 1998 (22 percent).