The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading
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.
There are now 159 more reasons to be thankful, one for each of the communities across the country that have expressed interest in participating in the All-America City Grade-Level Reading Awards. See the full list of cities who have pledged to make early literacy an urgent priority here. These communities, which submitted letters of intent last month to apply for the AAC Awards, are now part of a collaborative network that will provide technical assistance as they develop plans for improving early literacy.
Educators, business leaders, and organizers of Read! Reading Success by 4th Grade gathered this month in Springfield, Mass., to announce the launch of a funder collaborative to support programs to help more children in the community become proficient readers by the end of third grade. The group aims to get 80 percent of Springfield students reading at grade level by the year 2016 – currently less than 40 percent of Springfield third graders are considered proficient readers. Ralph Smith, a senior vice president at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and managing director of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, spoke at the event, emphasizing the importance of community involvement in improving early literacy. See local news coverage of the event here.
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 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, state campaigns and local efforts, or read recent studies on child development and literacy.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, released this month, again showed no improvement in fourth grade reading. More than two-thirds of all fourth graders scored below the “proficient” level on the test, and fewer than one in five African American and Hispanic children demonstrated proficiency.
“These results show why we need an all-out effort – state-by-state, city-by-city, and town-by-town – to help children master the essential skill of reading by third grade,” said Ralph Smith. “The results should make it clear that schools can’t do it alone. The academic success of children from low-income families depends on communities mobilizing to remove barriers, expand opportunities, and assist parents to serve as full partners in the success of their children.”
Those themes were highlighted in a recent webinar organized by the Campaign, which featured Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, Doris Hicks, a New Orleans principal and member of the National Assessment Governing Board, Jack Jennings, CEO and president of the Center on Education Policy, and Don Hernandez, a professor and researcher at Hunter College, City University of New York. You can view the webinar recording here.
The NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), showing results from 21 large school districts, will be released by the National Center for Education Statistics on Dec. 7. A live webcast of the release will be available starting at 10 a.m. EST. Register here.
A new study by the National School Board Association’s Center for Public Education finds that students who attend pre-k and half-day kindergarten are more likely to have higher reading skills by third grade than students who just attend full-day kindergarten.
The study looked at three measures of third grade reading comprehension – comprehension of words in context, literal inference, and extrapolation. On all three measures, third graders who had attended both pre-k and half-day kindergarten outperformed their peers who had attended full-day kindergarten only. The impact of pre-k and half-day kindergarten was the greatest for Hispanic children, black children, English-language learners, and children from low-income families. ELLs who attended pre-k and half-day kindergarten were 21 percent more likely to reach the literal inference level and 25 percent more likely to reach the extrapolation level than their peers who only attended full-day kindergarten, for instance. The study did not measure the quality of the programs children attended.
The results are particularly relevant for cash-strapped states, whose school boards may have to make tough decisions when allocating their resources. The study shows that half-day kindergarten alone produces the least benefits for students, and recommends school districts add pre-k to their existing kindergarten programs to see the best gains for students.