Urban Education Exchange

Mission: Our sole objective at Urban Education Exchange is to eliminate the achievement gap in reading. We support our network of educators with a precise, proven methodology for teaching reading comprehension – ensuring that urban students have the necessary literacy skills to compete and succeed in life.

Program: Over a decade of research findings have unequivocally demonstrated that curriculum and teacher quality are the keys to academic excellence. UEE’s program focuses on these critical factors and supports teachers at the point of instruction in the classroom. Our three-part, integrated program is specifically designed to enable teachers to meet the needs of urban students. UEE provides teachers with an online, research-based reading comprehension curriculum. We support this curriculum with curriculum-specific teacher training and detailed feedback through student assessments. UEE provides an online forum for teachers to exchange best practices and contribute valuable content for the benefit of the entire network.

History: Since the 2003-2004 school year, UEE has been offering its curriculum, teacher training and assessment services to teachers at urban schools. We have grown from assisting 2 schools in the 2003-2004 school year to supporting 30 schools in 2007-2008. Today, our clients are predominantly in the greater New York region, and we have begun our expansion to upstate New York, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and Texas.

Our philosophical underpinning – that what you teach and how you teach are the most important factors in student success – is derived from the research findings of reading experts as well as from our experience in urban classrooms. Our curriculum, teacher training, and assessment services are based on the successful reading comprehension program developed by the founders of the Family Academy, a public school in central Harlem. Their innovative reading comprehension curriculum took the student body from scoring a dismal 8% reading proficiency to scoring an impressive 63% in only three years.

UEE was created on the premise that this accumulated curriculum and teacher training knowledge should be shared with other schools. As urban schools face myriad challenges to student success, UEE seeks to alleviate one of these challenges by providing high quality resources and training for teaching reading comprehension.