The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy is marking September as its 20th year of supporting and operating literacy programs in Maine.

During the 2016-17 school year, the foundation will operate 18 Teen Trendsetters reading mentor programs throughout the state. Local systems taking advantage of the program include Lewiston High School and Longley Elementary School in Lewiston and Mountain Valley Middle School and Meroby Elementary School in Mexico.

This three-generation family literacy program engages both parents and volunteer teen mentors to support literacy skill development in first- or second-grade students who are, on average, half a year behind in reading. Parents sign a contract agreeing to read with their child at least twice a week. During the course of the program, children will receive 15 books to add to their personal home libraries.

Each student is also paired with a teen who has been trained as a reading mentor, and the pairs meet weekly to practice reading during one-on-one mentoring sessions.

During the 2015-16 academic year, the foundation operated 15 Teen Trendsetters programs that engaged nearly 300 pairs of teens mentoring elementary school students.

Dr. Craig A. Mason, professor of education and applied quantitative methods at the University of Maine, recently conducted an independent evaluation of these programs, including a comparison study revealing that participating elementary school students showed 61 percent more growth than their peers who did not take part in the program.