"The most important 20 minutes of your day...
is spent reading to a child."

Parent reading to a group of children.

Mission / Vision

Reading Success by Fourth Grade

Our Goal: All children will read proficiently by the end of third grade.

Our Mission: To ensure that the entire community is organized and working together to help all children acquire the fundamental reading and language skills necessary for success in school and in life.

Rationale: Until third grade, a child learns to read. After third grade, a child reads to learn. Research shows that reading abilities in third grade act as a tell-tale barometer for later school success.

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What we know:
Nationally, in 2005, only 31% of children entering fourth grade read at a "proficient" or better level. Moreover, the gap between racial/ethnic groups is wide - while 41% of White and 42% of Asian-American fourth graders score at or above the "proficient" level, just 13% of African-American, 16% of Hispanic-American, and 18% of American Indian fourth graders do. This gap is associated with socioeconomic status and parental involvement with reading. Consider these facts:

  • A child from a middle-income family typically enters first grade with about 1,000 hours of one-on-one picture book reading time with parents, other relatives, or teachers, compared with a child from a low-income family, who averages less than 100 hours.
  • First graders from lower-income families have a vocabulary half the size of children from higher-income families.
  • By age 3, children in low-income homes will have heard one-third as many words as children in middle and high-income homes (10 million versus 30 million words).

Gaps such as these are difficult to close by the time a child completes third grade, making programs that target children early, from birth to 5, all the more important. Children who enter kindergarten with poor early literacy skills tend to be poor readers in first grade and even into high school. Ten to fifteen percent of children with serious reading problems will drop out of high school, and about half of youth with criminal records or with a history of substance abuse have reading problems. 1

Early literacy skills encompass a child's:

  • Vocabulary;
  • Print awareness;
  • Knowledge of the alphabet;
  • Awareness of the sounds that letters make and ability to connect sounds with letters;
  • Written expression; and
  • Motivation to read and interest in stories

Early literacy skills do not emerge spontaneously but require time and practice.

What we know about Springfield:
More than three-quarters of all children in Springfield come from low-income families and research examining literacy acquisition showed that in 2003 children in Springfield on average scored 25 points lower on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) than their more advantaged peers in Concord and Wellesley - a difference of scoring in the 30th versus the 80th percentile. 2

Further, Springfield also compared unfavorably to other large urban school districts with similar numbers of low-income families. For example, almost 40% of children in Springfield entered Kindergarten with insufficient literacy acquisition skills for their age compared to 25.5% in Lowell and 25% in Brockton, placing them at a greater risk of school failure in future years.

By third grade, an achievement gap of 27 percentage points exists between low-income and high-income students in Springfield scoring proficient or above on the third grade Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS).3 And, according to 2008 MCAS data, only 33% of all of Springfield's third graders scored at proficient or above in the English Language Arts test.

The Work.

We will work on multiple intentional strategies with the primary goal of organizing the community to work together and put children on track to read at grade level by third grade, understanding that

  1. the best interventions begin before kindergarten;
  2. parents and caregivers are their children's first and most important teachers;
  3. both home and educational environments must support building children's early literacy skills.

The work strategies include communications, convening/educating, advocacy, collaboration with community partners, and grant making.

To achieve Reading Success by Fourth Grade, it is important to underscore the critical connection of this work to workforce development efforts in our community. With the child poverty rate in Springfield identified at the sixth highest in the nation, we see the work with parents, caregivers and families to raise the rate of children's reading success by third grade as an intentional strategy which can improve the parents' own literacy skills and ultimately improve the quality of our workforce. This bridging intervention to family literacy can positively impact the long-term financial stability of families, as we help parents/caregivers improve their own parenting and literacy skills so that they may improve their children's reading and ultimate school success.

We have been successful with the Cherish Every Child Initiative in putting the issues of early childhood education on the community radar screen, and our goal is to do the same with our effort to ensure children reading at grade level by fourth grade.

Strategies to help our community reach this goal include:

  • Communications campaign, with Jim Trelease, Springfield native and author of the best-selling Read Aloud Handbook, as the campaign spokesperson. The core message promotes talking with and reading to children, and working to build children's early literacy skills. The campaign theme is "The most important 20 minutes of your day is spent reading to a child."
  • Convene Early Literacy Advisory Committee made up of experts in early literacy/family literacy with goal of developing strategy(ies) to move the needle on third grade reading proficiency in Springfield.
  • Reconstitute and convene CHECH Early Childhood Leaders to support the goals and work of the early literacy initiative.
  • Collaborate with Springfield Public Schools as a critical partner in work toward goal of Reading Success by Fourth Grade.
  • Continue work to achieve the goal of high quality early childhood education for all 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, a critical component in the achievement of reading proficiency by the end of third grade.
  • Support and advocate for research-based literacy programs existing in Springfield, such as Reach Out and Read.
  • Partner with WestMOST to support early literacy work in after-school and summer programs.
  • Continue to advocate and support programs that address the healthy physical and social emotional development of young children.
  • Develop and disseminate one or more white papers and/or host educational briefings on issues and impact of early literacy.
  • Continue research on early literacy strategies to be used with family childcare providers and families.
  • Develop partnerships with organizations/entities in the community focusing on early literacy and support them with grants.
  • Research funding opportunities to move early literacy work forward.

1Discussion Guide: Ensuring Success for Young Children: Early Childhood Literacy, November 2008, Association of Small Foundations, Washington, D.C.

2Research examining the performance of children entering Kindergarten on the PPVT in Springfield, Lowell, Brockton, Winchendon, Concord and Wellesley was conducted in 2003 by Nancy Marshall, Wellesley College and analyzed by Steve Barnett, National Institute for Early Education Research in preparation for testimony pertaining to Hancock v. Driscoll.

3Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. (2008) school/district profiles: MCAS annual comparisons for Springfield. Retrieved from http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/mcas/mcascharts.asp?mode=o&view=tst&ot=5&o=1549&so=-&district=281&mcasyear=2007

© 2010 The Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation. All Rights Reserved.