The collective effort that brings together NYC’s Literacy Ecosystem.

The work of raising readers has always lived across New York City—in classrooms, libraries, community programs, and at kitchen tables. Each effort vital, each making a difference. But too often, these efforts have operated in isolation, limiting what’s possible for our young people.

NYC Reads Together brings these isolated efforts into a cohesive movement.

NYC Reads Together links educators, families, community organizations, and system leaders so that individual efforts don’t just coexist, but reinforce one another. By creating coherence, sharing knowledge, and building collective momentum, NYC Reads Together helps ensure that all of the work happening across the city adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts: a stronger, more equitable literacy ecosystem where every child can thrive as a reader and writer.

01

The Challenge

02

The Foundation

03

The Ecosystem Effort

CPRL’S Role

Learning to read and write happens across many spaces—and too often, it breaks down within and between them.

01

THE CHALLENGE

Children who are immersed in coordinated, evidence-based, and coherent supports become strong readers. Those without consistent access to high-quality, aligned supports too often do not. For too long in New York City, the majority of young people fell into this latter category—growing up without access to the instruction and experiences they needed, and when supports did exist, encountering them in fragmented, disconnected ways that limited their impact.

Raising a city of readers requires more than isolated excellence. It requires the many environments shaping a child's literacy development to work together.

What does it take to make that shift?

A shared goal. A clear roadmap. Transparent, coordinated action.

Educators, families, and communities working together so every child becomes a confident reader and writer—and New York City, a city of readers.

In 2023, NYC Public Schools took a critical first step with the launch of NYC Reads.

02

THE FOUNDATION

NYC Reads is an instructional transformation designed to ensure that all schools across the city use evidence-based, coherent, high-quality approaches to teaching literacy.

NYC Reads established a shared foundation: common language, aligned instructional materials, consistent measures, and a clear standard of practice. Together, these shifts make it possible for schools, tutoring programs, afterschool providers, libraries, and community partners to work in greater alignment—strengthening the conditions needed to support every child on the path to becoming a reader and writer.

NYC Reads Together turns alignment into action by building the connective infrastructure needed to mobilize a citywide effort around literacy.

03

THE ECOSYSTEM EFFORT

Launched in January 2025, NYC Reads Together connects the full range of actors shaping how children learn to read and write—schools, afterschool providers, early childhood organizations, libraries, museums, community-based organizations, funders, government agencies, policymakers, advocates, and researchers.

This is not a loose network. It is a coordinated movement. By organizing these partners around a shared vision and strategy, NYC Reads Together accelerates progress, strengthens what’s working, and closes the gaps between efforts.

Read our Strategic Roadmap

The Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia University combines research, policy, and other applied work to improve the public institutions that affect kids’ life chances. To do so, CPRL uses participatory problem-solving and research to test and spread evidence-based systems improvements, in the process building the structures that make sustained progress possible.

CPRL’s Role

CPRL organizes the NYC Reads Together effort around three key areas of work.

  • CPRL helps coordinate a complex ecosystem by convening cross-sector leaders, aligning partners around shared definitions, priorities, and policy directions, and supporting clear, consistent messaging. CPRL works to ensure that the many actors across the city can move together—strengthening a shared identity and enabling the literacy ecosystem to show up as a connected, collective effort.

  • CPRL connects and strengthens the work already happening on the ground by linking local networks across sectors, hosting convenings and working groups, and advancing cycles of experimentation aligned to the ecosystem roadmap and 2035 goal.

  • CPRL supports the ecosystem in defining and tracking what progress looks like—facilitating participatory processes to identify shared indicators and using those insights to surface bright spots and gaps. By making progress visible to help inform the strategy, guide investments, and fuel continuous improvement across the system, so that collective efforts translate into real gains for young people.