United Way’s Education Research Overviewis a meta-overview of the research around early grade reading challenges and evidence-based strategies. It also includes chapters about school readiness, middle school success, high school graduation and post-secondary success.
Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation, a national study released in April 2011 shows that students who do not read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than proficient readers. Poverty compounds the problem. A March 2012 update looks beyond family income to explore the effect of living in concentrated poverty.
Children’s Access to Print Material and Education-Related Outcomes Children from poorer families have fewer books in their homes or available to them in school and classroom libraries and they tend to live farther from public libraries than middle-and upper-income children concludes this literature review commissioned by Reading is Fundamental. The review by The Learning Point Associates found that having access to fewer books and other reading materials contributes to the lower academic performance of low-income children as compared to their more-affluent peers.
The national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is a collaborative effort by foundations, nonprofit partners, states and communities across the nation to: close the gap in reading achievement that separates many low-income students from their peers, raise the bar for reading proficiency so that all students are assessed by world-class standards and ensure that all children, including and especially children from low-income families, have an equitable opportunity to meet those higher standards. Since its inception, this Campaign has helped to support a movement to take action on grade-level reading. At the federal level, it’s happening with the Early Learning Challenge Fund, and the new Office of Early Learning, among many other initiatives. Some 35 governors have made grade-level reading a priority. And 344 communities are part of our Grade-Level Reading Communities Network, which is bringing together mayors, United Way agencies, chambers of commerce, schools, parents, and educators to substantially increase third grade reading proficiency in their cities and towns.
Information for Parents
Reading Rockets with reading comprehension and language arts teaching strategies for kids.
Colorín Colorado (in Spanish and English) can help parents determine if their children are on track.
National Literacy Coalition which has Every Child A Reader, a research-based, comprehensive reading program based in three essential components of reading instruction: demonstrated reading, differentiated reading and directed reading.
National Summer Learning Association which provides services to communities, school districts and programs to support your efforts to make quality summer learning programs accessible to youth.
Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children’s Learning, a study from the RAND Corporation, examines students’ loss of knowledge and educational skills during the summer months. The study, commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, finds that this loss is cumulative over the course of a student’s career and further widens the achievement gap.
Grade-Level Reading Campaign’s Essential Research with names and descriptions of programs that support the grade-level reading recommendations outlined in the 2010 KIDS COUNT Special Report, Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters.