The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is a determined effort to mobilize philanthropic leadership around moving the needle on third grade reading over the next decade.

The National Civic League’s 2012 All-America City Award program is fueling renewed interest in grade-level reading among city leaders. The award will recognize cities that develop the most comprehensive, realistic and sustainable plans to increase third grade reading proficiency. Details of the award were shared with city leaders recently at the meeting of the Education Policy Advisors Network of the National League of Cities, and will be discussed this week at the Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit in Nashville, Tenn.

The award will bring attention to the importance of third grade reading proficiency and to finding community solutions to the barriers that keep students from succeeding, particularly a lack of school readiness, chronic absence and summer learning loss. New tools and resources are being developed to help cities and school districts address these issues. A new interactive toolkit from Attendance Works, for example, includes background, research and strategies for communities to study and tackle chronic absence in their schools as a way to increase students’ time on task and, ultimately, achievement.

The Campaign will be working to identify technical assistance opportunities for cities that make a commitment to addressing grade-level reading, including those that intend to apply for the All-America City Award. Letters of intent are due October 14 and applications are due by March 12, 2012.

Stay on top of all that is new with the Campaign and with the progress of 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. Get the latest updates on federal initiatives or state campaigns and read recent studies on child development and literacy.

After more than 18 months of study, the findings of a task force convened by the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the ING Foundation were released last week outlining steps for transforming the nation’s early education system.

The report, “Building and Supporting an Aligned System: A Vision for Transforming Education Across the Pre-K-Grade Three Years,” grew out of a task force of researchers, policymakers, community organizers and practitioners. The participants were charged with examining the entire early learning landscape to better inform the work of principals and other stakeholders.

The report suggests 10 steps that policymakers and other stakeholders should take to ensure a standards-based and well-resourced system that gives all children and families access to high-quality learning and care.

The Wallace Foundation announced this month that it will give grants to six urban school districts to strengthen summer learning programs for their low-income communities. School districts in Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Duval County, Fla. (including Jacksonville), Pittsburgh and Rochester, N.Y., will receive funding through 2014. The district-based programs, which were selected because they already operate large programs aimed at reducing summer learning loss, are expected to provide models and evidence on how schools can tackle the problem. Districts will use their grants to strengthen their programs, starting with students who will be fourth graders in the fall. Based on data gathered earlier this summer, researchers from the RAND Corporation will help school leaders identify improvements for next summer. In 2013 and 2014, researchers will begin tracking students’ progress to determine the impact of summer learning programs over two years and any long-term effects on achievement.

Research has identified summer learning loss as one of the major contributors to the achievement gap in reading. This project launches a major new phase of The Wallace Foundation’s multi-year, $50 million summer learning initiative.

The Partnership for America’s Economic Success, a project of the Pew Center on the States, released three new child policy advocacy toolkits recently. The guides are aimed at recruiting business leaders to support early childhood policies that will strengthen the U.S. economy and workforce. The Mobilizing Business Champions for Children toolkit is a guide for advocates on recruiting and supporting business leaders. Business Champions for Young Children profiles business leaders in both the public and private sectors who are currently advocating for early childhood policies. To give other business leaders a reason to join their ranks, Investing in America’s Children: The Business Case explains why early childhood investments are critical to improving America’s workforce and consumer base.

The Pew Center’s Pre-K Now project also released a new paper making the case for “Pre-K as a School Turnaround Strategy.” The paper urges members of Congress to look at state and local turnaround initiatives that use limited funds for proven early education programs as a way to improve student achievement. According to the paper:

“High-quality pre-kindergarten is the first step in comprehen­sive education reform. Students who have this experience are better prepared to achieve at higher levels. Rigorous, independent research proves that quality pre-K can:

• Reduce grade repetition among first graders by 30 percent after one year of enrollment and 50 percent after two years.
• Save school districts about $3,700 per child over the course of the K-12 years.
• Return more than $7 for every dollar invested.
The evidence is clear and compelling: pre-K multiplies the impact of other reforms. Early investment is the best investment.”

A new study in the June issue of Child Development shows that a rich home environment can be the key to closing the school readiness gap for low-income children.

The study, “Trajectories of the Home Learning Environment Across the First 5 Years: Associations With Children’s Vocabulary and Literacy Skills at Prekindergarten,” finds that, by age 2, differences in a low-income child’s home-learning environment can determine whether he or she will be considered ready for school or labeled at risk at the start of kindergarten. The study emphasizes the importance of reaching out to parents, civic leaders and service providers to increase school readiness.

Researchers studied 1,852 children whose families participated in different sites around the country where the federal Early Head Start Evaluation Study was being conducted. Half the families studied received assistance through the program, which provides educational training and support for parents in poverty. Researchers looked at three measures of the home environment which have been shown to be correlated with school readiness: literacy activities, maternal engagement and the availability of educational toys.

Using these measures, researchers found that 70 percent of children whose parents created a rich home environment performed at or above national norms on two tests of early school readiness. These children performed on average a full standard deviation higher than children who lived in low-quality home environments – the difference between being considered on-level and at risk in kindergarten.