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.

Target has announced a new partnership with the Minneapolis Public Schools to support early literacy programs in the 35,000-student district. Target is among four Minnesota-based companies—including Cargill, General Mills and Medtronic—that is contributing nearly $14 million to the district for K-12 school-improvement efforts. Of that amount, Target announced at the May 2 press conference that it will invest some $6 million in grants over three years for initiatives aimed at helping students reach reading proficiency by the end of third grade.

The company will fund school library renovations, expansion of the Minnesota Reading Corps, which assigns reading tutors to elementary schools, as well as a pilot intervention program for struggling students. Target announced last fall that it would invest some $500 million in literacy initiatives nationwide by 2015.

“In order for our country to remain globally competitive, it is critical that we invest in education and help our children read proficiently by the end of third grade, which is a key milestone on the path to graduation,” said Laysha Ward, president of community relations, Target and Target Foundation. “For this reason, Target is deeply committed to doing our part to address the education crisis in America by providing the resources that teachers and students need to succeed. By expanding our partnership with Minneapolis Public Schools, we hope to accelerate the literacy achievement among young students.”

You can read news of the Minneapolis schools partnership and listen to the report on Minnesota Public Radio here. The district’s announcement is here.

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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.

Two bills that address important issues for the Campaign were introduced on Capitol Hill last week.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) on May 10 reintroduced the LEARN (Literacy Education for All, Results for the Nation) Act, which would provide support and guidelines for improving reading and writing instruction for children from birth through grade 12.

The bill would:

• Authorize $2.35 billion for comprehensive literacy efforts that support local school-based literacy programs (birth to grade 12).
• Enhance states’ capacity to improve literacy instruction through the continued support of state literacy leadership teams.
• Provide high-quality, research-based professional development opportunities for instructional staff and financial support for literacy coaches.
• Support promising and innovative practices to improve literacy and writing, especially for students reading and writing below grade level.

“As a former preschool teacher and school board member, I know that if students don’t have a strong foundation in reading and writing, there is very little else we can do to help them succeed in the modern world,” Sen. Murray writes in this Education Week commentary. “Literacy needs to come first, and it needs to get the strong and consistent support from the federal government that it deserves.”

Murray first introduced the bill in late 2009. Advocates have called for incorporating the language of the LEARN Act into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

The Family Engagement in Education Act of 2011 was also introduced May 10, in both the House and Senate, to strengthen family engagement provisions in the reauthorization of ESEA. The House bill was introduced by Reps. Todd Russell Platts (R-Pa.) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), and the Senate bill by Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Christopher Coons (D-Del.).

The legislation would provide incentives to districts and schools to implement best practices, such as parent leadership academies, place family engagement coordinators in schools and provide professional development for educators on how to partner with families, according to the National PTA, which has championed the legislation since it was first introduced last year. The Family Engagement in Education Act would also strengthen the sole federal program dedicated to parent engagement, the Parental Information and Resource Centers (PIRCs), to scale-up research-based strategies for engaging families. PIRCs currently serve more than 16 million parents in all 50 states.

The reading levels of rural and urban third graders lag behind those of their suburban peers with consequences that can affect later educational outcomes, according to new research from Suzanne Graham at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Reading Levels of Rural and Urban Third Graders Lag Behind Their Suburban Peers shows that socio-economic status plays a large role in reading achievement; for struggling readers, so does location. Rural students who were struggling readers at the beginning of kindergarten have fallen behind their urban and suburban counterparts by third grade, even when children of the same socioeconomic status are compared, according to the research brief.

The differences in third grade reading achievement between rural and non-rural children who were low achievers in kindergarten not only reflect a child’s socioeconomic background, but also different educational opportunities and school resources available to these children. The brief finds, for example, that only 27 percent of teachers in rural schools report active professional development programs in their schools, compared with 40 percent of teachers in non-rural schools.