Moving the Needle on Grade-Level Reading (Angela Duran Commentary)

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From coast to coast, states are in a constant battle to recruit new businesses and jobs. If we want to set Arkansas apart from the competition, we must build a capable and educated workforce. 

That starts with equipping our children for success at an early age. In 2012, Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (AR-GLR) set out on a mission: to ensure every child can read on grade level by the end of third grade. Why third grade? That’s when students make the switch from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” 

As shown by our new report, “Moving the Needle on Grade-Level Reading in Arkansas,” every day we’re making progress in meeting our goal by focusing on five key impact areas: 

• family and community engagement 
• school readiness
• school attendance
• classroom instruction
• summer learning

Over the past six years, we’ve found schools with strong parental and caregiver engagement are more likely to see improvements in reading. So, we’ve implemented initiatives like Talking is Teaching to empower nearly 6,000 families to talk, read, sing and play with children from an early age. We’ve helped enact policy changes requiring public schools to provide biannual reports of students’ reading levels so parents can more easily track progress. And we’ve partnered with organizations like AR Kids Read, a one-on-one tutoring program, to encourage regular engagement.

Through our work, we’ve discovered only half of Arkansas students are considered “ready” for school when they arrive at kindergarten. We’ve fought to change that by helping secure $114 million in annual funding for the Arkansas Better Chance pre-K program; $11.4 million for quality infant and toddler care through Early Head Start Child Care partnership grants; and $60 million from the U.S. Department of Education for improved and expanded pre-K quality and local capacity.

Unfortunately, we’ve also learned how school attendance continues to be an issue for our state. Today, more than 12 percent of kindergarteners through third graders are chronically absent—stunting their educational achievement and increasing their risk of dropping out of school. Through our Make Every Day Count Initiative, we’ve helped more than 45 districts statewide develop plans to reduce chronic absence in their schools. We’re now partnering with the Arkansas Department of Education to implement chronic absence as a new accountability measure for every district in the state. 

At AR-GLR, we’ve seen first-hand the significant impact our state’s teachers can have on student success. That’s why we’ve supported the ADE’s Reading Initiative for Student Excellence (R.I.S.E.). To date, R.I.S.E. Academies have provided 1,000 K-2 teachers with evidence-based instruction and training in the areas of phonic and phonological awareness. Soon, we’ll see these resources extended to educators in grades 3-12 to strengthen core-reading instruction for students at all levels. 

Our efforts don’t end when summer begins. In Arkansas, only 21 percent of our children have access to quality summer learning programs, putting them at risk of losing as much as two to three months of reading skills. To prevent this “summer slide,” we’ve partnered with organizations such as the Arkansas Community Foundation and Arkansas Out of School Network to support innovative summer learning programs around the state. 

With the help of our more than 30 partners, we have increased the percentage of third graders in the state reading on grade level from 35 percent in 2015-2016 to 37 percent in 2016-2017. Moving forward, we must double down to ensure our students graduate prepared for college and the workplace so we can continue to recruit new businesses and jobs to our state. We hope others will join us on this journey by downloading our new report, Moving the Needle the Grade-Level Reading in Arkansas, to find out how we can make Arkansas a national leader in education and economic outcomes.

Angela Duran is the campaign director for the Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a collaborative effort of more than 30 state organizations supported by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, Arkansas Community Foundation and Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. For more information, visit ar-glr.net.