Celebrating Experience Corps: 20 years of helping young readers thrive

April 27, 2026

Tempe, AZ - Tempe's AARP Foundation Experience Corps program is celebrating 20 years of helping young students become stronger readers. Through one-on-one tutoring - and plenty of high fives and fist bumps - the program has impacted the lives of more than 5,700 students across the city.

Helping students reach grade-level reading benchmarks is a critical milestone. If they can read proficiently at the end of third grade, that's a strong predictor of their future academic success, including high school graduation and college attendance.

Students who don't learn to read well by third grade are likely to fall behind in all subject areas and are much more likely to drop out.

Tempe Experience Corps, part of AARP's national program, partners with both the Tempe Elementary and Kyrene school districts to offer the program during and after school. Volunteers 50 and older are paired with students in 1st-3rd grades and meet twice a week for focused tutoring.

Students overwhelmingly experience growth in their reading skills. In the 2024-2025 school year:

• Experience Corps Tempe served 418 students
• 99% showed growth in reading fluency
• 90% showed growth in reading accuracy

Volunteers not only help students build early literacy skills but also grow important social and emotional skills they need for successful learning now and later in life.

Tempe launched Experience Corps in 2006, with just three schools and 25 volunteers. This school year, the program is spread across 16 schools, with 130 volunteers tutoring about 400 students.

Over the past 20 years, more than 450 volunteers have taken part in the program.