March 2013

The Campaign is a collaborative effort by foundations, nonprofit partners, states and communities across the nation to ensure that more children in low-income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college, a career and active citizenship.

In March 2012, more than 120 cities, counties and towns submitted ambitious and sustainable plans to join the Grade-Level Reading Communities Network and pledged to get students on track for reading well by the end of third grade. One year later, we are thrilled to see how these plans are shifting into action. Here are a few highlights that communities shared with us:

• In Chula Vista, Calif., Mayor Cheryl Cox used her State of the City address to feature the city’s efforts to promote early literacy, which include training volunteer tutors, offering school readiness tools for families at the Chula Vista Public Library and providing academic programs during school breaks at the South Bay Family YMCA.
• In Dayton, Ohio, ReadySetSoar recently hosted a widely attended Kindergarten Readiness Summit to announce the expansion of its work to include kindergarten readiness as well as third grade reading, with a specific focus on chronic absence and summer learning loss. To view materials from the summit or for more information, please click here.
• In Marshalltown, Iowa, the Spread the Words – Read by 3rd Campaign has dedicated a task force to analyze attendance trends, identify chronically absent students and develop best practices to ensure that these children make it to school.
• In Palm Beach County, Fla., the Children’s Services Council has teamed up with the Literacy Coalition to form a steering committee that will guide a countywide public education campaign supporting the Campaign’s three community solutions:  school readiness, school attendance and summer learning. Read more about the great things happening in Palm Beach here.
• Several communities celebrated Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March 1, Read Across America Day.  The Literacy Coalition of Onondaga County gave $50,000 in grants to organizations in Syracuse, N.Y., working to promote literacy. In Ames, Iowa, several CyRide buses displayed moving billboards to promote early literacy and advertise the city’s “Step Into Storybooks” event, coming up in April. In Hartford, Conn., community leaders and elected officials read to children in pre-K through second grade. And in Seattle, the Dr. Seuss FIESTA event brought parents and children together to strengthen literacy skills and learn strategies to prepare for kindergarten.

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The GLR Communities Network is preparing to welcome a new set of communities.  To join the Network, interested communities must:

• Submit a Letter of Intent by April 1 expressing plans to apply: Sample Letter
• Convene a cross-sector, sponsoring coalition with a designated leader
• Develop a Community Solutions Action Plan (CSAP) that will be reviewed by both peers and GLR Campaign Partners: CSAP Framework

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The GLR Campaign is joining several other national partners to declare September the first-ever Attendance Awareness Month. This is a chance for community coalitions to rally around the importance of reducing chronic absence in the early grades by launching attendance initiatives or building on existing work.

Click here to learn more about getting involved in Attendance Awareness Month and to register for a webinar on April 9 from 1-2:15 pm EDT that will explore how you can catalyze change by participating in this important effort. Also check out a toolkit to help schools, organizations and communities make the most of the opportunity. Communities can participate in a variety of ways, including:

• Organizing parent summits, letters and outreach to families
• Arranging contests, celebrity visits and other incentives for students
• Calling for proclamations from mayors or superintendents
• Developing public service announcements for local media
• Advocating for improved data tracking to identify students with at-risk attendance
• Organizing community-wide attendance campaigns

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Stay on top of all that is new with the Campaign and with grade-level reading by making a regular visit to the website: www.gradelevelreading.net. The site offers a comprehensive news source on issues related to early childhood, reading development and achievement. Also, please share news from your organization or community so that we can include it in the next newsletter. Contact Phyllis Jordan at pjordan@gradelevelreading.net.

Providence won the grand prize in the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge this month, garnering $5 million for an innovative early learning initiative that will build young vocabularies and complement its local grade-level reading effort. Beating out 300 proposals from across the country, the Providence Talks initiative includes outfitting children under age 4 with small electronic devices that will record how many words and conversations these children hear each day. The words will then be counted and conversations analyzed to provide feedback to parents and caregivers on how to build children’s word knowledge. The program is free, confidential and completely voluntary.

Philanthropist and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg set up the contest to encourage mayors to come up with innovative ideas that can be replicated in other cities. “Providence has identified a new model of early childhood education that is direct, simple and fundamentally revolutionary,” he said.

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New funding opportunities:

• The federal Health Resources and Services Administration will provide an estimated $7.8 million through its “Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems: Building Health Through Integration” grant program. Grants will go to proposals that:  improve healthy physical, social and emotional development during infancy and early childhood; eliminate disparities; and increase access to or improve the quality of early childhood programs. Applications are due April 26. More information is available here.

• Organizations in selected cities can apply for the Leadership & Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement’s Social Innovation Accelerator program. Five leaders working in target impact areas, including third grade reading initiatives, will receive capacity-building and coaching services valued at more than $150,000 over 12 months and a $10,000 stipend for travel and related expenses. Qualified organizations must have an annual operating budget of at least $1 million, have been in operation for at least five years, and have a presence and/or impact in at least one of nine target cities: Baltimore; Detroit; Fresno, Calif.; Jackson, Miss.; Los Angeles; New York City; Oakland, Calif.; Philadelphia; and Pittsburgh, Penn. Applications are due April 5. To apply or to review details, please click here.

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Building on the research and experience that has informed decades of children’s programming, PBS KIDS has launched its first app designed specifically for parents to help children age 4 and under build early literacy and math skills. The app provides more than a dozen games parents can play with their kids, each themed around a familiar location, including the grocery store, restaurant and home.

The app, developed with support from the GLR Campaign, not only provides games, but also gives parents advice on adapting these games in real-life settings and the option to receive push notifications with more tips for building skills. PBS Parents Play & Learn for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is available for free on the App Store. The app is also available for Android on Amazon, and now on Google Play and on the NOOK Store.

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A new report from The Urban Institute, Measuring Performance: A Guidance Document for Promise Neighborhoods on Collecting Data and Reporting Results, offers recommendations for this federally funded initiative aimed at providing cradle-to-career services for children living in disadvantaged neighborhoods, as well as enhanced family and community supports. Other place-based initiatives and organizations working to improve schools and early childhood education programs in their communities may find these recommendations useful for measuring the progress of their efforts.