We asked each of our five founding partners to write a guest post describing how they support our goal of improving third grade reading rates. Krissi Jimroglou, Director of Impact Strategies and National Partnerships  at United Way Worldwide, describes how the GLR Campaign’s goals dovetail with  those of United Way Worldwide.’

When the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading asked United Way Worldwide to join the effort to improve third-grade reading back in 2010, it was a natural fit.

After all, we had already committed to cut the number of high school dropouts in half, and we had a long history of emphasizing the importance of investing in and supporting early learning efforts in local communities. Third grade represented a critical midpoint—to assess whether early learning was taking root and whether students were on track for a successful middle school transition and ultimately graduation.

We also offered the GLR Campaign a broad network of more than 1,200 community-based United Ways across the country that potentially could partner with the Grade-Level Reading Community Network to support struggling readers and their families – building off the early learning work that many United Ways were already doing.

Today more than 100 GLR Network community coalitions include United Ways, 33 of which are led or coordinated by United Ways. In addition, almost 40 percent of United Way Women’s Leadership Councils have adopted grade-level reading as their signature issue.

We’ve co-sponsored regional meetings of GLR communities so that United Ways and their community’s grade-level reading coalitions can exchange ideas and learn from each other. And we’ve elevated the grade-level reading issue and its three community solutions—school readiness, attendance and summer learning—both within our network and beyond.

We’re also expanding our existing Success by 6 initiative that promotes school readiness by helping parents, caregivers and early educators nurture children’s cognitive, social and emotional development to include the full birth-through-8 years.

Finally, we’ve committed to recruit significant numbers of volunteer readers, tutors and mentors to help ensure that more children from low-income families achieve reading proficiency by the end of third grade. This will not only contribute to third grade reading success, but it ultimately helps us achieve our goal of reducing the dropout rate and helping families break the cycle of poverty.