Founded by Educators. Run by Educators. 100% Employee Owned.
Over 25 years ago, a reading specialist and university professor founded American Reading Company to address a crisis: too many students were not yet reading at grade level and they, their teachers, and their parents were unsure of how to fix it. The 2022 NAEP results indicate that not only does the reading crisis in the U.S. persist, students performing at the lowest levels continue to fall further behind their peers.
We believe that all students deserve the opportunity to achieve reading success using proven resources and methods like foundational skills instruction, daily reading and writing practice, and books that build knowledge while reflecting each child's world. ARC partners with schools and districts to establish, scale, and sustain high performing continuous improvement systems where students, educators, and their communities flourish. This is our work, our mission.
Every child in America reading and writing on, or above, grade level.
In 2022, ARC transitioned to an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP). ARC is also a benefit corporation — meeting the highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability to balance profit and purpose.
We want our employees to be an integral part in the company. Our financial results are shared daily, company-wide.
ARC provides staff with flexibility to support their families including: flexible hours, paid family leave, kid-friendly building/zoom meetings, and the ability for new parents to bring their babies to work with them.
Our employees wear their VITAL ENERGY to work every day — they have the power to choose how they show up and contribute to our mission. Our only rule is closed-toed shoes in the warehouse... you know, for safety.
All full-time employees receive two full weeks of vacation when ARC closes for the week of July 4th and the last week of December, 9 additional paid holidays, and 15 flexible days of paid time off to use at their discretion.
Full-time employees receive a 50-book home library customized for their children's interests every calendar year.
Professional development through book studies, featured speakers, and on-site training drives learning.
Staff are welcome to bring their dogs to work, if they pass their interview process.
Classroom Library Designer Jessica Smith-Harper talks about the process of creating ARC's most unique benefit: Family Libraries.
An ARC Spanish content developer shares how literacy cultivates language learners inside and outside the classroom.
Our Strength is in Our Diversity
ARC is committed to cultivating, fostering, and preserving a culture of diversity and inclusion. We embrace and encourage our employees' differences, life experiences, inventiveness, self-expression, and talent. Their uniqueness represents a significant part of our culture and corporate achievement.
ARC employees wear their vital energy to work. What is vital energy anyway?
A Deliberately Developmental Organization
ARC grounds its work in an "idea meritocracy" in which we all operate from the same core Work Principles. This culture encourages all employees to meaningfully contribute to the innovation and success of our deliberately developmental organization. Staff members are challenged to set ambitious personal and professional goals, and grow into their dream role. It's the organization's responsibility to identify the goals that benefit the whole and provide the training, resources, and staffing necessary to reach those objectives. From the moment someone joins ARC, they are enrolled in leadership development groups that progressively train them to lead as an individual, a manager, and a director of managers.
Crucial Accountability made a giant impact for me as a newly minted manager. ARC U discussion of the text provided me with a framework for necessary but tough conversations. I learned to incorporate the elements of effective communication into 'moves' that if present, helped to make hard conversations more approachable with greater mutual understanding.– Tim Ferry, Executive Director of Supply Chain
Become One of Our Trusted Partners
Districts use real-time data to accelerate reading and writing achievement.
Students know what they can do and what they need to learn next.
Schools ensure every student makes adequate yearly progress.
Students across the U.S. build literacy and agency to change the world.
My students have loved being able to call themselves zoologists or entomologists. Learning about animals and bugs is super intriguing and engages students in writing and reading. The cross-curricular aspect of ARC Core allows students to soar and reach their academic potential.
– Teacher, Division Street Elementary School