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.

Mayors play a key role in the Grade-Level Reading Communities Network, and several of them have been quite busy in November:

• San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro led the successful effort to persuade voters to approve the Pre-K 4 SA Initiative, implementing a minor sales tax increase in order to fund a high-quality, full-day pre-K program that will serve more than 20,000 children over the next eight years.
• Providence Mayor Angel Taveras joined with the Children and Youth Cabinet and Providence Public Schools Superintendent Susan Lusi to launch Providence Reads—a partnership of more than a dozen businesses and organizations to help promote school readiness, improve school attendance and support summer learning. Read more about it on our Campaign blog.
• Kansas City Mayor Sly James announced two grants totaling nearly $100,000 for his Turn the Page initiative. The money—from a Cities of Service grant and from the AmeriCorps VISTA program—will pay for recruiting literacy volunteers and developing training and assessment materials.
• Mayor Kevin Johnson and his Sacramento Reads initiative welcomed Campaign Managing Director Ralph Smith for a stakeholder meeting and presentation of the Community Pacesetter Honor that Sacramento received for its leadership in the Campaign. A Wells Fargo Bank official discussed the bank’s $160,000 investment in expanding the local Reading Partners tutoring program.

 

Email us at info@gradelevelreading.net and let us know the latest news from your community leaders, nonprofits and foundations.

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The Campaign and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation hosted a webinar on Nov. 14 that brought together Network communities with learning disabilities advocates to discuss the newly released report, “Don’t ‘DYS’ Our Kids: Dyslexia and the Quest for Grade-Level Reading Proficiency.” The report looks at progress in understanding and meeting the needs of children with dyslexia, insights that could help other struggling readers.  It also emphasizes the need to bring together the learning disabilities community with the broader literacy movement.

The webinar recapped the report’s recommended actions for helping children with learning disabilities and highlighted successful efforts in Vero Beach, Florida, as well as the work of  Literate Nation, which is promoting legislative solutions.

To view the archived webinar, please click here.

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Videos of the TED presentations from each of the 32 All-America City finalists at the Denver conference are now available on our website here. Each community gives a brief overview of their Community Solutions Action Plan and the comprehensive, sustainable efforts they have set in motion to foster literacy efforts in their communities.

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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. Additionally, get the latest updates on federal initiatives, state campaigns and local efforts, or read recent studies on child development and literacy.

The National Summer Learning Association is now accepting applications for its annual Excellence in Summer Learning Award, which recognizes summer programs that are accelerating academic achievement and promoting healthy development for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Past winners have used the award to bolster fundraising and draw attention from media and policymakers.

This year, NSLA is also presenting Summer Sparks awards for innovations in such categories such as Early Literacy, Family Engagement, Digital Learning and Health and Nutrition.

Visit summerlearning.org/excellenceaward to apply today!

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Nonprofit organizations can apply for grants to conduct month-long “community-wide reads” under The Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

About 75 organizations will be selected to participate, receiving grants ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, educational and promotional materials, and access to online training resources. The reads will be held between Sept. 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014.

The guidelines for applying can be found here. The deadline for all applications is February 5, 2013.

Education Week released a special report on the Common Core State Standards and their influence on the way literacy is thought about and taught in schools. The report highlights ways in which the new standards are helping to bring literacy instruction into all disciplines, and how the needs of English-Language Learners are increasingly being taken into consideration when designing language instruction for all students. The report also includes key federal and state policy changes related to literacy, including how a number of states have begun to create third grade reading policies.