Hundreds of Sacramento parents, students, and residents joined local educators and dignitaries this week to help launch the city’s grade-level reading campaign. Mayor Kevin Johnson kicked off the effort—one of the first and largest citywide initiatives of its kind in the nation—with a community literacy fair and press conference. Targeting early literacy and ensuring students’ success up to third grade, Mayor Johnson said, is sure to impact public education all the way through high school.

“Reading at grade level by the end of third grade is critical to a child’s future academic success,” Mayor Johnson said at the Aug. 24 event. “This is a unique opportunity for Sacramento to lead the way and prove what is possible when a city comes together to address a glaring problem.”

Sacramento READS! 3^rd Grade Literacy Campaign was inspired, in part, by the KIDS COUNT special report, Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters, released last year by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The initiative is also aligned with the goals of the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

Johnson described the need to focus on early literacy during his annual State of the City Address earlier this year. Currently, less than half of Sacramento schools are meeting academic targets.

In fact, only 37-percent of third graders are reading at grade level in Sacramento. While Sacramento’s public schools have shown slight increases in academic achievement over recent years, Mayor Johnson believes that the gap is not closing quickly enough.

“Over the last seven years, [our] third graders have improved by an average of 2 percent per year in reading,” the mayor said. “This may sound positive, but think about it from this perspective: at the current rate, it will take 20 years before close to 80 percent of our third graders are on grade level. That’s an entire generation.”

The primary campaign goal is to ensure that 80 percent of Sacramento third graders can read at grade level by 2020. In order to reach that goal, the Sacramento READS! campaign has set targets in three impact areas: school readiness, school attendance, and summer learning.

Johnson was joined at the press conference by key civic and community leaders, including local United Way representatives, city council members, school officials, and parents. He concluded the press conference by calling on the entire community to help Sacramento reach its goal by volunteering a total of 500,000 hours to improve early literacy.

Ralph Smith, a senior vice president at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the managing director of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, said he hopes that mayors and city leaders across the country will take note of the Sacramento initiative and start making their own plans to improve early reading achievement.

“Getting all children reading on grade level by the end of third grade is an urgent priority because if they miss this milestone they are likely to continue to have challenges in school and fail to graduate,” Smith said. “Sacramento is a national model for rallying an entire community to ensure that all children reach this critical milestone for school success.”

Sacramento joins New Britain, Conn., Springfield, Mass., and a growing number of other cities in making early literacy—and specifically third grade reading proficiency—a priority. Such efforts are the focus of the 2012 All-America City Grade-Level Reading Award. Dozens of cities are expected to apply for honors in the renowned competition. Cities are urged to submit letters of intent—due Oct. 14—to be eligible for membership in the GLR Network and to receive benefits, including free national technical assistance.