Grade Level Reading Campaign
The goal of the Grade Level Reading Campaign is to ensure that all students are reading at grade level by the end of grade 3.
The Center for School Change, the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, the Connecticut State Department of Education, and the Children’s Fund of Connecticut are partnering with the Annie E. Casey Grade Level Reading Campaign and working with New Britain, a mid-sized urban community in Connecticut, on this initiative. This effort brings together the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain, the Consolidated School District of New Britain and the New Britain Early Childhood Community Collaborative as partners responsible for co-designing and implementing the New Britain Grade Level Reading Campaign.
Parent engagement, community collaboration and education improvement are the means by which the third-grade reading result will be achieved. The following principles will frame the community partnership:
- a focus on children birth through age eight;
- a community-owned and driven effort with shared accountability for student success among families, the community and schools that positions the family as a partner in their child’s learning;
- school and community defined strategies that include: high-quality, evidence-based, data-driven literacy instruction, alignment with pre-k community-based programs, connections with out-of-school time programs (e.g. before/after school and summer programs) and integrated learning opportunities that bolster social, emotional and cognitive development;
- continuing engagement of primary caregivers (mothers, fathers, grandparents) as learning partners.
The partnership will work on multiple tracks simultaneously and agree on a set of comprehensive strategies to create and improve current community-based early literacy programs and pre-k to grade 3 practices to: (a) sustain the gains for children who are currently in quality early care; (b) ensure that children without a quality early care experience are successful in the early grades; and (c) make sure that future cohorts of children enter school ready for school success.