Reading level achievements between low-income children and their peers are growing. The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is challenging cities across the country, including seven Indiana cities, to make early literacy an urgent priority.
“This campaign began as an effort to address one of our most pressing problems in this country. We should all be disturbed that one in five low-income kids are not reading at a proficient level. We think that for this country, we can do significantly better than that,” said Ron Fairchild, senior consultant with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.
According the research completed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, two-thirds of U.S. students are not proficient readers by the time they finish the third grade. They also found that once children miss that benchmark, they’re more likely to drop out of school altogether.
The focus on kids up to the third grade is important because educators believe that by that time, kids should be able to read and understand information.
“Before the third grade, kids are learning to read. After that, they are reading to learn,” said Fairchild.
The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is an effort to mobilize communities across the country to change grade-level reading issues and give youth a chance at success.
Instead of simply pouring more money into reading programs or suggesting kids read more books, the campaign has identified three issues that aid today’s reading problem: the readiness gap, attendance and summer learning loss.
Fairchild said that oftentimes, children from low-income families begin school already far behind. Many aren’t socially, emotionally, or cognitively developed to take advantage of what schools have to offer.
Research also shows that low-income children are less likely to be read or spoken to regularly or to have access to books, high-quality early care, and pre-kindergarten programs.
“The more words that children hear, especially if they’re positive words, the greater their vocabularies will be,” said Ted Maple director of Success by 6 for the United Way of Central Indiana. “For parents, it doesn’t require doing flash cards for hours or purchasing the most advance toys. Helping your child learn to be a good reader it requires your time and can be fit into everyday teachable moments.”
Unfortunately, Indiana is one of 12 states where pre-school is not mandatory or government funded.
Fairchild went on to say that there is also a serious problem with chronic absenteeism.
Some Indianapolis school systems have already identified “the summer slide” as a major issue and have chosen year-round schooling to help rectify the problem. The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading also identifies summer learning loss as an issue for many low-income children.
The campaign said that research shows that children from low-income families lose as much as three months of reading comprehension skills over the summer. By the end of fifth grade, they are nearly three grade levels behind their peers.
“We chose these three issues because each of them, independent of one other, has solid research behind them to say they have a dramatic impact on lowering reading performance,” said Fairchild. “If the solution to reading proficiency in this country was simply the right curriculum or read the right book, I think we would have done that by now.”
The campaign has goals of seeing a significant increase in grade-level reading by 2020.
One hundred and fifty five communities across the country, including Indianapolis, have been charged with implementing strategies to help tackle the three issues the campaign has currently identified as grade-level reading barriers.
The Marion County Commission on Youth (MCCOY) has been given the task of spearheading grade level reading improvement efforts in Indianapolis. They have gathered organizations such as the United Way of Central Indiana, Indiana Partnership Center, Net Literacy and the After School Coalition of Indianapolis among others to put together a plan to help the city respond to school readiness, absenteeism and summer reading loss.
“There is actually legislation that says if a young person can’t read at grade-level by the time they leave third grade, they are not to be promoted,” said John Brandon, president and executive director of MCCOY. “It’s going to take everybody in our community to do something about these issues. And if we don’t do this, we’re in trouble.”
Participating cities must submit improvement plans by March 12. Those plans will be a part of a community review process where experts around the country will be reviewing and tweaking plans and sharing the best ideas among the applicant pool to be implemented this fall.
In 2015, the campaign will review the success of cities’ ideas and make changes if necessary.
Travis DiNicola, executive director of IndyReads, believes that this initiative is very important. As someone who works daily with adults who are unable to read at a sixth grade level, he says that the long-term impact of low reading skills can be devastating.
“You have to be able to ready at an eighth grade level to even get your G.E.D.,” said DiNicola. “Reading affects everything. If you’re an adult who’s unable to read well, job opportunities are so few. A lot of our students do have jobs, but they are underemployed. This issue may also mean that their kids struggle with reading. It becomes a cycle of illiteracy.”
For more information, visit www.gradelevelreading.net
