Chalkbeat

Kindergarten registration is now open in Philadelphia

2024-01-22T19:29:27+00:00

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Kindergarten registration is now open for the 2024-25 school year in Philadelphia, and the 5-year-old students at Ellwood Elementary School in the Oak Lane neighborhood want their peers to know what they’ve learned.

They can sound out words and explain how birds build their nests. They know how to cut paper and can match superheroes with their super senses. And they know about hammerhead sharks and how to play the “shake and spill” math game.

Ellwood’s 40 students are some of the 9,100 kindergarteners learning crucial early education skills across the city this school year, and district officials want that number to grow.

Kindergarten enrollment took a dip during the pandemic but has come close to recovering to pre-COVID levels: In 2019-2020 there were 9,880 students registered, but in 2020-21 that figure dropped to 7,140.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said Monday he is encouraging families to sign their 5-year-olds up before the May 31 deadline. In addition to helping the district prepare for next year, registering early also gives families a better chance for their students to be placed in seats at their neighborhood schools or schools of their choice.

“Getting registered for kindergarten is so important,” Watlington said at a press conference at Ellwood. “Kids who get an early start get a good foundation in reading and math and do well as they go through school.”

To be eligible, students must be 5 years old on or before Sept. 1, 2024. Parents and caregivers can sign their students up online on the district’s website or in-person by appointment at families’ neighborhood schools.

All 3- and 4-year-old students can enroll in free prekindergarten through the district if they won’t be 5 years old by the next school year.

Diane Castelbuono, the district’s deputy chief for early childhood, said registering as early as possible “gives families a chance to adjust and think about preparing for kindergarten.” It also gives schools the proper time “to get to know who the children are as they come in.”

Kindergarten is not mandatory in Pennsylvania, but Castelbuono said “almost everybody goes” in Philadelphia. She said that’s evidence that families in the city “really understand the importance of full day schooling at the earliest age.”

Watlington said he would “love for there to be compulsory kindergarten” in the state.

“We need more school, more time to learn, not less,” Watlington said. He’s already thrown his support behind new Mayor Cherelle Parker’s year-round-school proposal, promising to pilot the idea in the coming years.

Parker hasn’t revealed any details about what she wants year-round-school to look like, but she told Chalkbeat it won’t be “children sitting in a classroom at a desk” for 365 days.

Over the next few months, the district will be hosting open houses for registered students to come and meet their potential teachers and future classmates. One will be on March 5 and another will be during the week of May 13.

Students who go to Ellwood next year may have Erica Meyers, who has been teaching kindergarten in Philadelphia for eight years.

Meyers said “every day is a big win” in her classroom.

“I see these students come in to me, they don’t know how to sit in chairs. They don’t know how to sit on the carpet or raise their hands,” but they learn quickly, she said. And by the time they move on to first grade, Meyers said they’re adding, subtracting, and spelling their names.

“They’re making sounds, they’re reading and the little light bulbs go on, which is awesome,” Meyers said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

How ‘reading captains’ are fueling Philadelphia’s push to improve early literacy

2024-01-16T12:00:00+00:00

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On an unseasonably warm day in Philadelphia, Tiye Thompson was investigating a mystery.

Thompson, 46, is one of more than a thousand city residents, mostly women of color, who spend their own time and money supporting Philadelphia’s youngest readers by serving as “reading captains.”

A few days earlier, as part of that work, Thompson and a group of neighborhood matriarchs papered South Philly with fliers for a big party they were throwing to celebrate “Reading Promise Week” and promote early literacy. She booked sponsors, volunteers, free food, and even an inflatable bouncy castle to boost the event.

She could have sworn she put one of her painstakingly laminated signs to promote the event on a sidewalk tree. But now, it’s gone. “What is going on?” Thompson asked. “Who is taking these signs and where did y’all put them?”

Thompson’s tenacity about finding that single sign mirrors her dedication to the reading captains program, a quintessentially Philly invention.

Armed with a crash course of expert training in the science of reading, phonics, and other early literacy techniques, reading captains help prepare parents and guardians to reinforce the lessons kids are learning in the classroom. They fan out into neighborhoods with one goal: Make sure the children on your block have the support they need to read on grade level. Because right now, many of those children cannot.

They are also plugged into a volunteer network that spans the city. They know prekindergarten application deadlines, how to spot students at risk of dropping out, and other aspects of the education ecosystem. And unlike other people involved in education and schools, they can knock on doors to provide children with direct support, like free books and other literacy resources.

Tiye Thompson, center, a reading captain in Philadelphia, posts signs about a block party to celebrate "Reading Promise Week."

“It’s very Philly, and it’s very in your face,” said Simone Partridge, director of communications at Read by 4th, a coalition of groups working to improve early literacy in Philadelphia. “It’s like, I’m going to show you and I’m going to bring you along, whether you like it or not, you are going to love literacy by the end of this five-minute conversation.”

Most Philadelphia district students in grades 3-8 can’t read on grade level according to the latest standardized test data. And over 30% of children in third grade, which is considered a critical year for literacy, are scoring at “below basic” on those exams — the lowest score level.

Adults aren’t doing much better. Recent federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows some 22%of Philadelphians aged 16 and older “lack the most basic literacy skills.” That same federal data, collected by advocacy group Achieve Now, shows 52% of Philadelphia’s adults are functionally illiterate.

All that means many Philadelphians may struggle to fill out job applications, apply for local and federal resources, and help their children become strong readers. In short, a lack of reading skills sustains the cycle of poverty, Partridge said.

Partridge works closely with the reading captains to champion their work.

“Reading captains are the heart and engine of Philly’s early literacy movement,” Partridge said. “When I say they make change happen quicker and faster than anybody else, I mean it.”

Black women are ‘mothering the community’ through literacy

The reading captains program launched in September 2017 as an extension of a collaboration between the Read By 4th campaign and Global Citizen, a civic engagement group in the city.

The program is modeled after the city’s block captain program — another initiative powered by volunteers who organize neighborhood clean-ups and beautification efforts.

At the Latinx Literacy Fest at Max Myers Playground in Northeast Philadelphia, reading captains handed out free books in multiple languages.

Reading captains organize block parties, group discussions, read-aloud events at laundromats and cafes, and they connect parents working with young readers to existing resources. They aren’t tasked with giving instruction or tutoring directly to students, but some come to the program with a background in education and can offer that kind of one-on-one support.

And many of the reading captains giving their time and energy to this effort are Black women and women of color, Partridge said.

“There’s a culture of Black women, particularly older Black women, giving back to their community … and extending their time,” she said. “With or without recognition that is happening. Whether you see it or not, whether they are funded, or not,” Black women are “mothering the community,” Partridge added.

For Thompson, the effort is personal and intergenerational.

Her family has been a mainstay on the block since 1941. Thompson’s grandmother (her “nana”) was a community fixture on 18th street and her house — which Thompson now owns and is raising her young daughter in — was a gathering place for neighbors of all ages.

“I refuse to allow the neighborhood to do anything but blossom,” Thompson said, “because I know how hard my grandmother worked … whatever it takes, whatever I have to do, I’m going to make sure it gets done. No excuses.”

Philadelphia's reading captains are working to make early literacy a part of every day life for kids in the city.

Diane Mills, a reading captain who helps run the program in West and Southwest Philly, said every volunteer approaches their job differently because each region and neighborhood has unique needs. But what connects them is their devotion to preparing the city’s children for a successful future.

“We want to see our children thrive by five, so they can read by fourth grade, so the street doesn’t take them and by seventh grade, they drop out,” Mills said. “If we don’t grasp them now, then we’re failing society and failing to help our future leaders to become powerful and take on the mantle that we have left.”

Mills said some of her family members struggled with their reading comprehension, which is part of what made the literacy issue so important for her.

Before the Reading Captain program existed, Mills, like many of her fellow reading captains, worked with several community volunteer and mentoring groups teaching reading, community health skills, HIV/AIDS awareness, and other issues that involve young people.

Then, in 2021, Mills had a health scare that almost took her life. She recovered, but said that experience was like God giving her a second chance.

“I’ve always had a passion for literacy, but after my illness, it was more like ‘this is my mission, to reach parents and their children.’ This is what I really have to do: Bring life to children through reading,” Mills said.

And their energy extends beyond academic concerns. As a reading captain, Mills organized an opera performance for students in a trendy hotel ballroom, complete with passed hors d’oeuvres. She said she wanted to give Philly students the chance to experience opulence and what it feels like to be waited on, something she said many young kids — especially Black kids or kids from low-income backgrounds — don’t get in the city.

For Eden Galan, a reading captain in Northeast Philadelphia, the pandemic spurred her to join the movement. Galan had already been volunteering as a bilingual reading coach in the city and mentoring students in the school district.

But watching her first grade son’s virtual classes, she noticed the wide array of abilities and challenges each student came to class with. In her neighborhood, many students are English language learners and speak Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and a host of other languages.

Galan said seeing those challenges made her “want to help and make a change in our city.”

Reading captains organize story-time activities and read-aloud events for Philadelphia's youngest learners.

“We’re a class of hard-working people, we have refugees, we have immigrants with different needs,” Galan said. “I love how on my block, you’ll just go a couple of doors down and you see so many different people, you’ll hear so many different languages.”

And that impacts how she approaches her job as a reading captain. Last October, Galan held a festival for kids in the Northeast which featured bilingual read-aloud events, dodgeball games, free food, and free books available in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

She recalled attending another reading captain event where immigrant families were encouraged to share their experiences raising children and attending school in the U.S. Those opportunities for families from all backgrounds to share their struggles and successes around education is central to the role reading captains play in their communities.

“If you create the opportunities for people to come together, they’re going to come together,” Galan said.

‘I think all neighborhoods should have reading captains’

Reading captains don’t work directly with the school district, but their efforts are coinciding with a districtwide plan to overhaul how students learn to read.

Starting next school year, the Philadelphia school district will be rolling out a new English language arts curriculum with a focus on the science of reading, as part of Superintendent Tony Watlington’s strategic plan.

But while district officials focus on the curriculum, test score data, and the demands of supporting teachers and students, Mills said reading captains can take a more personal approach and act as a trusted messenger to instill a love of reading beyond the classroom.

Adara Richardson, whose young daughter is classmates with Thompson’s daughter, called the program “amazing.”

“I think all neighborhoods should have reading captains,” Richardson said. “It gives children a different perspective on life. And it allows them to see that there’s other things to do besides just carelessly and misguidedly roaming the streets.”

Shannon Petty, a mom on the block, said her daughter Elia is “reading very well now because she had so many resources available to her at a young age,” most of those through connections to reading captains.

Elia said she loved the artwork, the books, and the moonbounce at the block party but said she especially loved the cotton candy.

Tiye Thompson, center, speaks to neighbors at the "Reading Promise Week" block party.

Reading captains are the Philly community

The reading captains understand something fundamental about Philly: History means something.

Gabrielle Saylor, Thompson’s childhood best friend and a former education advocate in the city, said organizing and gaining neighborhood trust in Philly takes time and, sometimes, generations.

“Philadelphia is a legacy place,” Saylor said.

It’s that collective history that the reading captains want to share with new residents.

But Thompson’s block has been slowly gentrifying, and that can mean more challenges to the relationship-building work reading captains do.

A new neighbor who moved into the rowhouse where Thompson’s poster went missing said she threw the sign away. She didn’t like that Thompson had stapled it to a tree and said she thought attaching a poster to it could harm the tree.

Thompson said she was hurt that her preparation for the “amazing block party” was treated with such disrespect.

Philadelphia's reading captains work to create moments of celebration and joy around literacy.

“I’m giving, and giving, and giving of my time,” Thompson said, “so to get slapped and kicked in the butt because of a poster on a tree, that’s when it gets heavy.”

But Thompson pushed on. She and neighborhood matriarch Betty Beaufort — an unceasing voice in the fight to fund libraries in Philadelphia — put their signs up on a telephone pole instead.

Word got around and the event was a success. Kids from the block filled tote bags with free books and gathered on colorful cushions to have stories read to them. Other volunteers set up tables recruiting for after-school activities including Scrabble competitions.

The neighbor who removed the sign did not attend.

“I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing this for my community,” Thompson said. “It’s okay for [someone] not to participate, because everybody else is going to get a benefit from it. And if I just see one more baby come up to me and say that they finished a chapter of a book, and they’re waiting for the next book well, I’m good. It’s worth it.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia officials optimistic about early literacy efforts despite disappointing test scores

2022-12-07T11:25:00+00:00

This story is featured in Chalkbeat’s 2022 Philadelphia Early Childhood Education Guide on efforts to improve outcomes for the city’s youngest learners. To keep up with early childhood education and Philadelphia’s public schools, sign up for our free weekly newsletter here.

Mayor Jim Kenney had a question for the 30 or so four- and five-year-olds arrayed before him at the Little Einsteins child care center in Germantown just before Thanksgiving.

After reading to them from the book “Our Favorite Day of the Year,” about holidays, food was on the mayor’s mind.

“What do you like to put on top of your pie? I like vanilla ice cream,” he said.

“Pizza!” one little boy shouted.

“Pizza on top of your pie?” the mayor responded in mock disbelief. The little boy giggled.

Soon, it was a free-for-all. “French fries!” “Hot dogs!” “Nuggets!” children shouted.

“Now you’re being silly,” the mayor said, appearing to enjoy every moment as the children basked in the attention.

During November, Kenney visited several child care centers to highlight what he considers one of his biggest achievements as mayor: making affordable, high-quality early childhood education available to an additional 4,300 students through PHLPreK, an initiative that supplements state and federal programs including Pre-K Counts and Head Start.

The focus on prekindergarten is part of the city’s effort to ensure that all students can read on grade level by the end of third grade. This Read by 4th campaign began in 2015, and has brought together universities, foundations, businesses, and other institutions to emphasize literacy activities in everyday life as well as in the classroom.

As a target on the road to universal proficiency, the Philadelphia Board of Education has set a goal that 62% of third graders will be proficient readers by the 2025-26 school year. Yet while many systems have been put in place to help the city achieve its goal, the results so far have been mixed — at least as measured by standardized test scores.

Just 28.2% of Philadelphia third graders scored proficient or advanced in reading this year on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the state test scores. That is not only a decline from pre-pandemic proficiency of 32.5% in 2019, but more than 10 percentage points below the goal set by the Board of Education for the 2021-22 school year for the district to be on track for its goal of 62%. (In 2020, the state did not administer the PSSA; in 2021, a relatively small share of students took the PSSA due to the pandemic, and officials have warned against comparing those scores to results from other years.)

Overall for grades 3-8, 34.7% of students scored proficient in reading on the PSSA in 2022. That’s below the interim target of 42.5% the district set for 2021-22 in order to stay on track to reach its goal of 65% proficiency by 2026.

Recently released scores from this year’s federally administered National Assessment of Educational Progress for fourth and eighth graders — known as “the nation’s report card” — revealed promising but also worrying signs for Philadelphia’s younger students when it comes to literacy.

While fourth graders’ NAEP reading scores dipped nationwide and in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s fourth grade reading scores did not change significantly from 2019, the last time the NAEP test was administered. At the same time, Philadelphia’s fourth graders scored significantly below the national average and the average for Pennsylvania. (NAEP is administered to a representative sample of students, not all of them.)

Despite worrying signs in the data, those working in the field also see encouraging signs.

Donna Cooper, executive director of the advocacy group Children First, called it “amazing” that Philadelphia’s fourth grade NAEP scores in reading “didn’t tank” for 2022 after all the pandemic-related disruptions.

And others point to the foundation for future success in literacy that Philadelphia has put in place recently through a diverse set of initiatives inside and outside schools. “We feel we’re in a much better place than we were seven years ago,” said Jenny Bogoni, executive director of the Read by 4th campaign.

Early literacy efforts focus on coaches and curriculum

The initiative started in the wake of research showing that students reap lifelong benefits if they are reading proficiently when they start fourth grade. A 2012 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, for example, found that students who do not reach this milestone are four times less likely to graduate high school on time than those who do.

Despite the added pre-K seats in Philadelphia over the last several years, inadequate availability may still be hindering efforts like those to improve early literacy.

About 12,000 children, or nearly half of those eligible for those seats based on family income, still don’t have access to affordable early childhood education, Cooper pointed out.

That could contribute to the reality that despite “tons of effort” after seven years “we’re not seeing movement” on the traditional measures of children’s literacy, she said.

Still, while the percentage of students reaching proficiency on the PSSA has not shown the progress people would like, the share of students scoring “below basic” (the lowest level) on the test did fall across various student subgroups from 2015 and 2019. For example, the percentage of Black male students scoring below basic on the English Language Arts test declined from 46.5% in 2015 to 41.5% in 2019, according to the district.

“We haven’t quite gotten to putting more in the proficient bucket, but we’re bringing up the bottom,” Bogoni said.

Starting in 2019, the district overhauled its early reading curriculum by hewing more closely to the science of reading, said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, the district’s deputy chief of curriculum and instruction.

This shift in instruction seeks to couple comprehension skills — including vocabulary development, background knowledge, and verbal reasoning — with more explicit phonics instruction, decoding, and phonemic awareness, or the relationship between letters and sounds.

With the curricular shift, “We’re more focused on foundational skills,” said Malika Savoy-Brooks, the district’s chief academic support officer.

The district is also working with local colleges of education to make sure that teachers planning to work in the early grades get more rigorous training in reading instruction. And since 2015, early-grade teachers have received summer training in best practices for teaching reading.

Beyond that fundamental shift in core instruction, the district has also hired literacy coaches recently to work in many schools. Officials have also sought to raise awareness among parents about the importance of exposing them to books from a very early age.

Outside of school, the Read by 4th campaign has enlisted the help of “reading captains.” These are community residents who conduct literacy activities in the neighborhood at libraries, schools, parks and other settings.

Diane Castelbuono, the district’s director of early childhood education, said there is “a small army of reading captains out there engaging friends and neighbors in how to raise a reader, and how families can access the resources they need.”

Separately, the district is working with book publishers and funders to obtain more diverse books, and enhance classroom libraries to make sure most of the books and teaching materials are more culturally responsive to the children in the classroom, who are overwhelmingly Black and brown.

Francis-Thompson said the district is drawing on materials and philosophy from Dr. Gholdy Muhammed, an associate professor at Georgia State University who emphasizes the importance of cultural affirmation and appropriate reading materials to children’s development of literacy skills.

“Significant work has been done making sure there are books in children’s homes, making sure the distribution of children’s books is culturally responsive and in different languages,” Castelbuono said.

While curriculum is important, so is making sure that the teachers of early learners also focus on children’s social and emotional needs, said LaTanya Miller, executive director of the district’s office of academic supports who works on adaptive curriculum for students with disabilities.

And with respect to English language learners, who make up 12% of the district’s students, the district has also gradually shifted its approach to stress that speaking and understanding a language other than English is an asset, not a liability.

Over the past several years, the district has invested in modernizing kindergarten through third grade classrooms to include centers devoted to reading, writing, and LEGOs.

And officials are ramping up other initiatives, including playful learning, in which opportunities for reading and conversation are present in places all around the city, including parks, laundromats, and buses.

The ultimate goal of all these efforts, Francis-Thompson said, is to prepare students to be critical of the world around them and “not just a passive consumer” of information. Beyond just teaching skills, creating literate students is about “accepting them and embracing all that they are in a learning environment,” she said.

As with many other education initiatives, the pandemic has disrupted efforts to improve early literacy. Bogoni said almost two full years of remote learning has taken its toll. But she stressed that the city is now in a better position to make badly needed progress.

“We were feeling we were on the cusp of making good progress as the pandemic hit,” she said. “Now the task is to double down. The foundations are in place that should allow us to move forward in this space of urgency.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Chelsea Clinton in Philadelphia to highlight project tying learning to everyday places

2022-10-27T22:59:17+00:00

Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek one day was pondering the fact that only 20% of children’s waking hours are spent in school.

Then she spied a bench.

“Does a bench have to just be a bench?” she asked herself. “Is it just for sitting, or can we do other things with benches?”

She called an architect friend. “We could make a bench into a scale,” she said. “Kids could be doing measurements using the bench.” Benches could add movable parts that create puzzles to promote math skills. A map in front of a bench for students could orient them to their surroundings.

She thought further. Why can’t a bus stop be a place of learning? What about a grocery store? “We could turn the entire city into learning opportunities,” she thought.

And so the playful learning movement was born. It seeks to make public settings – buses, laundromats, public parks, grocery stores, and waiting rooms in health centers and doctors’ offices — places of active learning by including displays that catalyze conversations and activities with children into literacy and knowledge.

“It’s building cognitive science into the architecture of everyday spaces,” Hirsh-Pasek told a group of about 100 people assembled Thursday to tour places in Philadelphia where the approach to learning has taken hold.

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, participated in the half-day of activities to celebrate the city as the epicenter of the initiative, which is gaining traction around the country. She took the tour, which included a laundromat, park, and health center, all with activities and signs that invite children and their caregivers to talk about their surroundings.

“It’s a joy to feel the passion here in Philadelphia. What is happening here needs to radiate across the state and the country,” said Clinton, vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, which funds the Too Small To Fail initiative focused on the needs of young children around the country, including Philadelphia.

Among the tour participants were city and foundation officials and community members who have been enlisted as “reading captains” through the city’s Read by 4th partnership, which aims to have all children reading on grade level by fourth grade. Most participants were transported around the city on two SEPTA buses, which were decorated with signs designed to promote reading and conversation.

One bus sign had a picture of a traffic light and said, “I spy with my little eye something that slows things down.” Another had pictures of meat, fictional character Eeyore, and a meteor, with the prompt to “Shout Out Sound-Outs.”

At the River Alive! Learning Trail in Tacony Creek Park, there were sculptures of different animals with grooves in them to direct the path of water. Big benches had signs asking questions like, “What shapes do you see around the river?”

Part of River Alive! in Tacony Creek park

“Learning can’t and shouldn’t happen only in a classroom,” Clinton said during a stop at the Laundry Café at 4th and Allegheny. Philadelphia is a leader in early literacy and playful learning, Clinton said, because it has the lucky convergence of researchers like Hirsh-Pasek and institutions like the William Penn Foundation, which organized the tour and invests heavily in programs directed at children from birth to age eight. (The William Penn Foundation is a funder of Chalkbeat.)

Clinton noted that city leadership also has a commitment to child welfare and early education. Deputy Mayor for Child Welfare Vanessa Garrett Harley and Commissioner of Parks and Recreation Kathryn Ott Lovell attended Thursday’s event.

“I don’t think there are many other places where all of that is true,” Clinton said of the united front from so many different sectors. Mayor Jim Kenney joined the group in the Laundry Café, reiterating his oft-held position that education is the key function of government, and lamenting that the American system – where wealthier districts have more money to spend than less affluent ones with greater challenges — doesn’t give all children what they need to thrive.

“Almost every other civilized country gets it but us,” he said, praising the effort and the involvement of philanthropic organizations like the Clinton Foundation and William Penn, as well as businessmen like Brian Holland, founder and owner of the Laundry Café.

He opened the laundromat and made it a literacy-rich environment in an effort to bring “meaningful change” to his neighborhood, said Holland, who grew up in impoverished Chester. He added, “It’s going to take a generation to see the results.”

Reading captains Diane Mills, Carlotta Stafford, Denise Henry, and LaShawn Hurst.

Philadelphia’s early literacy rate is still low – fewer than one in five fourth graders met the proficiency benchmark in 2021 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Clinton said that’s a sign that “we haven’t been doing enough ever to really invest in kids, and we haven’t been doing enough recently to recover from the learning loss after Covid.”

Hirsh-Pasek and others stressed that the key to the success of the playful learning movement is to get community buy-in. Several Read by 4th reading captains – who function as block captains for reading – say that they see changes in their neighborhoods.

“Our goal is to get students to read proficiently by fourth grade,” said Diane Mills, who coordinates reading captains in West and Southwest Philadelphia. “We tell parents they can help even if they don’t know how to read themselves. Literacy is a lifestyle, and we want to build it block by block.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org

Read by 4th prepares littlest learners for a life of reading

2020-04-02T13:15:45+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The Notebook prepared this report on early childhood education in Philadelphia for our spring print edition before the full force of the COVID-19 pandemic hit. We are posting the stories from the print edition online this week along with updates from the providers and advocates we featured. The Read by 4th team has continued to focus on helping families support learning at home. They have created a new Family Resources page on our website, where they’ve pulled together some of their favorite online activities.

On a sunny Saturday morning children’s librarian Christina Holmes took a seat and began reading to the moms, dads and tots clustered around her in the infant/toddler corner of the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library.

“Open them, shut them, give a little clap, clap, clap,” said Holmes, as parents helped tiny hands open and close. “Open them, shut them, give a little clap, clap, clap.”

The youngest in the crowd was about six months, the oldest about two. For 30 minutes, the children absorbed rhymes, sounds and stories as well as the babbling and chatter of the toddlers and grownups all around them.

The weekly event, called Read, Baby, Read, is among a wide variety of efforts – of both small and large scale – that make up the initiative known as Read by 4th.

Read, Baby, Read is two years along at two libraries in the city, Blackwell and Richmond – and expanding to 10 other locations over the next three years.

Another library-backed program, Literacy in Early Learning Spaces, which promotes early literacy best practices in child-care centers, started two years ago in two impoverished Philadelphia zip codes – and expanded to four, with plans to reach seven parts of the city next year.

And yet another program, ParentChild+, which trains parents at home in ways to promote literacy and numeracy in young children, started in North Philadelphia, expanded to West Philadelphia and South Philadelphia – and plans to expand yet again, to Southwest Philadelphia.

The focus on the early years is intentional.

“We’ve got 85 percent of cognitive development happening in the first five years of life,” said

Christine Caputo, chief of youth services and programs at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Both Read, Baby, Read and Early Learning Spaces are programs that seek to promote early literacy among parents and caregivers. The question, said Caputo, is “How can we set kids up for success with all those early literacy and language development skills and practices, so that they are not starting out behind when they enter kindergarten?”

The initiative to bring early-childhood literacy specialists to child-care providers aims to make a big, lasting impact. The specialists visit child-care centers, family child-care homes and group child-care homes in neighborhoods (identified by zip code) with high populations of young children, numerous child-care centers, lower literacy levels and higher poverty levels plus a neighborhood library.

To date, the specialists are reaching 31 programs, where they help set up a reading area in the

classroom and outfit the space with books, shelving, rugs and soft seating. More books arrive monthly.

“The books are high-quality, diverse and representative of the children attending those centers,” said Devon Laudenslager, who runs the program.

Providers receive coaching “around literacy and language development” twice a month and attend four professional development sessions a year at the local library. “Our teachers are gaining so much confidence around what they’re doing,” Laudenslager said. “We’re seeing classroom environments that are really changing and becoming literacy rich.”

The Read by 4th campaign launched in Philadelphia in 2015 and has more than 100 partners including foundations, the School District, the Free Library and the city as well as nonprofits, other government agencies, corporate partners and volunteers.

Building home libraries, and training teachers and parents are among ongoing initiatives, said Jenny Bogoni, Read by 4th’s executive director.

Philadelphia is part of the national Campaign for Grade Level Reading, which supports efforts at the local, state and national levels to raise awareness. That group cites research showing that students need to be proficient readers by the end of third grade to master more complex subject matter beginning in fourth grade. Yet two-thirds of fourth graders and four out of five low-income students need reading help.

The Campaign, based in Washington, has support from a wide swath of education-related groups.

A ripple effect for the whole family

Where the Free Library’s Literacy in Early Learning Spaces seeks to train child-care providers, the ParentChild+ program seeks to coach parents, in their own homes, in ways to promote literacy and learning about numbers – numeracy – with their very young children.

The initiative at multiple sites in Philadelphia, with support from the GreenLight Fund, is part of a national program, four decades old, that seeks to increase school readiness, decrease the need for special education, and improve high graduation rates by supporting reading and play activities for young children in the home.

“It’s the two-generation strategy,” said Omar Woodard, GreenLight’s executive director. “We can do a lot of work with young people by themselves but children exist in the context of families. We want to boost the capacities and possibilities of parents. We don’t believe it’s trickle-down, we believe [the support] has a ripple effect for the whole family. Improving parent-child interaction isn’t good for just one child, it’s good for the rest of the family as well.”

The program opened four years ago in partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority and Public Health Management Corporation in the Sharswood/Blumberg neighborhood in North Philadelphia. A second program opened in the Mantua neighborhood, with yet another set to open in the Bartram neighborhood.

The home-visit specialist works with the family over two years. “We’re seeing better interactions between parents and the child, we’re seeing higher literacy and numeracy scores, and we’re seeing 100 percent being signed up for quality pre-K slots. Over the last four years this has been incredibly effective and transformational investment,” Woodard said.

Other Read by 4th initiatives are far smaller in scale.

The Art Sphere Inc. nonprofit “uses art and music, mindfulness and movement” as a means of promoting literacy in its school and library programs. For young children, Art Sphere offers a lunchtime series on Tuesdays at the Fishtown Library branch.

“Parents and kids come to make art and make music centered around books,” said Director Kristin Groenveld. “Our staff reads books, but they make it more interactive with art and music projects. We’re engaging all the children’s senses so they’re learning spatially as well as auditorily, as well as visually.”

The preschoolers learn about book making, “they do singalong, they do nursery rhymes” so that when they begin to learn to read “they’re actually very familiar with the process through song,” Groenveld said.

At the Read, Baby, Read session at the Blackwell library branch, Kimberly Braxton and her 15-month-old toddler Clifton have been regulars since before he turned one. “He likes to come and track with the other babies and toddlers,” Braxton said.

Besides story time, the Braxtons planned to check out children’s books featuring food, colors and animals – “things he likes right now,” she said.

Yahala Fisher, with her son Semaj, almost one, have been visiting story time “since he was three months old,” Fisher said. Read, Baby, Read “helps him learn new words and meet new people and become interested in reading. That’s what I want.”

And that’s the point, said Naisha Patterson, who runs the program. Read, Baby, Read and other library programs seek to “support emergent literacy, language development and purposeful play” for the city’s youngest patrons and their parents. Parents, Patterson said, “are basically the child’s first teacher.”

Sixers’ Tobias Harris gives $1 million to education philanthropies

2019-10-23T02:59:42+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philadelphia 76ers forward Tobias Harris is interested in educational justice and in giving back to his adopted home.

At a glitzy event on Tuesday dubbed Tobias Community Draft 2019, the basketball player gave away $1 million to nine organizations, including three in Philadelphia that collectively received $625,000 of the total. His focus is on promoting literacy and supporting excellent teaching.

Among the recipients were the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, which received $100,000; the city’s Read by 4th campaign, which received $200,000, and the Center for Black Educator Development, which received $300,000. Team Up Philly, a nonprofit that works to empower girls, received $25,000.

Among the other organizations that received money was the fund supporting schools in Orange County, Fla., where he used to play for the Orlando Magic.

Harris, 27, who signed a $180 million contract with the Sixers last summer, has directed his philanthropic endeavors toward helping underserved communities, focusing on literacy and on supporting teachers and the education profession.

The event, held at Mastery Prep Charter School in Nicetown, was in the style of an NBA draft, with Harris counting down from nine to one in highlighting each organization. The recipients knew they would be recognized, but didn’t know the amount of their award until it was announced.

Harris and his team read about the Center for Black Educator Development and reached out to the organization, Harris said. The organization was founded this year by former Mastery-Shoemaker principal and longtime city educator Sharif El-Mekki.

“It’s a great organization. I really love what they are doing for African American teachers,” said Harris. “This will really give them a platform. The numbers don’t lie.”

He was referring to a study by Johns Hopkins University showing that black children who had just one African American teacher during their school careers were far more likely to graduate from high school. If they had two, their chances of attending college are significantly better.

The center is working on building a pipeline for African American youth to consider teaching careers, while also offering workshops and professional development to teachers.

Jenny Bogoni is executive director of the Read by 4th campaign, a coalition of many organizations working toward a day when all Philadelphia children read on grade level by the end of 3rd grade. When children reach that milestone, it is a predictor of future academic success.

“We’re trying to reinvent early literacy. … It takes more than one author,” Bogoni said in accepting the award. The money will help expand the presence of reading coaches “in all areas of the city.”

Donna Frisby-Greenwood heads the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, which raises money and funnels it into specific District schools and programs.

The money, she said, will be split among four elementary schools that made their needs known through its Philly FUNDamentals initiative, which enables principals to publicize their wish lists and match them with donors. The schools that will benefit from this grant are Bethune, H.A. Brown, Kenderton and Penrose.

“We did a lot of groundwork in picking the right [organizations] in line with what I wanted to get across,” said Harris. As for Philadelphia, “This is a place I want to make home.”

District expands program that gives books to young readers

2019-06-04T02:15:31+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Shelly Alston said that her granddaughter Jewel is always reading.

When she brings Jewel to the gym and works out, the girl sits on the side reading a book. In the back seat of the car, Jewel reads a book, Alston told the gathering at Spruance Elementary School, where she teaches 5th grade.

“Her love of reading has really grown,” Alston said of her granddaughter, a 3rd grader in Barbara Kennedy’s class at Spruance, in Northeast Philadelphia.

Jewel wasn’t an avid reader until a program came along at Spruance called BookTrust, a national nonprofit that, along with local philanthropies, provides up to three books a month to kindergarten through 3rd-grade students.

The key: The children can pick out the books themselves, depending on what they’re interested in.

“BookTrust made me a better reader by showing me all the choices out there,” Jewel said solemnly, her head barely reaching above the lectern set up for the adults. Her favorites: the Black Lagoon adventure series.

BookTrust, which was started in Colorado in 2001 by the Schatz family, has since spread to 21 states, reaching 57,000 children.

Superintendent William Hite and officials from BookTrust traveled to Spruance on Monday to announce that Philadelphia’s pilot program of 10 schools would be expanded to include all elementary schools in the District within four years, a step made possible by a $1.3 million grant from the William Penn Foundation.

Philadelphia is the first city to go districtwide with the program, said Tiffany Kuehner, president and CEO of BookTrust. She and Kristy Adams, the organization’s senior director of philanthropy, flew from Denver on Monday morning to attend the announcement event.

Jewel, with her grandmother Shelly Alston, explains how BookTrust nurtured her love of reading. Alston is a 5th-grade teacher at the school.

Kuehner asked the students to guess how many books the children at Spruance had received so far. Estimates ranged from “more than a thousand” to “gazillion billion.” The answer: At Spruance, a pilot school, 644 students have received 11,663 books.

BookTrust’s goal is to close a gap between low-income and more affluent communities. The organization cites research showing that in poorer communities, there is just one book for every 300 children, while in middle-income households, the average is 13 books per child.

Hite said the program fits well into the District’s early literacy initiatives. One of his “anchor goals” is for all students to leave the 3rd grade reading on grade level. Research has shown that children who reach that milestone have a much better chance of graduating from high school and moving on to secondary education.

Although there has been considerable progress in the last few years, more than half the city’s students still don’t reach that goal.

Elliot Weinbaum of the William Penn Foundation said that one goal is to create lifelong readers.

“We want all students to have a love of reading,” he said. At the end of the four years, the program will reach 150 elementary schools and 43,000 students in 2,000 K-3 classrooms. The program also includes resources for teachers.

“In a system of this size, every school and every teacher needs effective practices,” he said.

As part of the program, students take books home to create personal libraries that supplement those in their classrooms, which have been assembled as part of the city’s Read by 4th initiative, also supported by the William Penn Foundation.

Teachers and instructional leaders at Spruance heaped praise on the program.

“It’s amazing what an opportunity this is,” said Barbara Kennedy, as her students lined up to receive their books for the month of June. “It’s more than just giving them a love of reading.”

She explains that it sharpens their thinking skills because every month each child gets a “budget,” and they have to make decisions about what books they want based on how much there is to spend. And she said she also likes how the students express generosity. “They’ll say, ‘I want to get this for my little brother or sister.'”

Kierra Cooper picked a book about two best friends because it came with a little bracelet. “I can give it to my friend,” she explained.

Peter Ayodele picked a coloring book about Ninja Turtles, “because you get to color, and it also teaches you how to draw Ninja Turtles. And my sister’s an artist,” he explained earnestly.

Dyslexia group hosts symposium at Temple to highlight science of reading

2019-04-18T21:15:25+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) hosted the Knowledge and Practice Standards Symposium at Temple University, encouraging colleges and universities to adopt better reading-science practices into their curriculums for future elementary school teachers.

The event, on April 15, featured speakers from varying backgrounds who shared their thoughts on teaching students to read. The presenters included Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite; education journalist Emily Hanford; Russell Washington of the School District’s Department of Special Education, and Brent Johnstone of FathersLead365, who grew up with dyslexia.

IDA representatives attended, as did those from Arcadia University, Drexel University, and St. Joseph’s University, all of which have adopted the IDA’s standards for teaching the science of reading to prospective teachers.

This effort stems from a districtwide initiative to get all children reading on grade level by the time they enter 4th grade. The coalition of city organizations and agencies known as Read by 4th, which also had representatives at the symposium, is devoted to hitting this goal, and the IDA has developed standards that they say will put the District on track to meet that expectation.

Reading achievement has improved in Philadelphia for the youngest students, but more than 60 percent are still not reading on grade level.

The IDA’s Knowledge and Practice Standards are meant to be implemented into teacher preparation programs. The association wants universities to get accredited by them so that students can properly be taught how to read.

According to IDA’s website, reading instruction must be explicit, systematic, cumulative, and multisensory and “integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing.”

It is necessary to teach the “structure of language at all levels,” including the direct relationship of speech and sounds, the mechanics of sentence structure, and semantics, which is the meaning of words and phrases. Studies have backed up the effectiveness of teaching phonics systematically, although the emphasis on requiring that approach in curricula and on instructing teachers in how to do it has fallen in and out of favor. Many educators hold the view that it is more productive to teach children a love of reading instead of treating it as a mechanical exercise.

“We have to teach children how their written language works,” said Hanford, who has produced a radio documentary on science-based teaching methods. “[Teachers] didn’t learn about the structure of the English language and how English spelling works, or about the morphology or etymology. Teachers need a deep knowledge of this stuff in order to teach little kids to learn how to learn to read, and I think one of the reasons we fight so much about reading instruction in the United States and in many other English-speaking countries is because English is a difficult language to learn and there is a lot to know.”

Johnstone did not respond to the reading instruction he got in school. But he went on to be co-founder of FathersLead365, whose mission is “to impact, inspire and uplift fathers from all walks of life, to be leaders in their community by developing initiatives that promote being an active father and engaging their children in productive and responsible ways.” He shared part of his life story, describing how crucial these programs are so that teachers know how to help all students learn to read, especially those with dyslexia.

Until Johnstone came to Temple University in the ’90s to play football, he had no idea he was dyslexic. Through tears, he described how challenging it was to go through life surrounded by people who could read and have no idea why you were struggling with reading.

“You become the kid that doesn’t work hard. You become the kid who doesn’t care, the kid who’s not trying. And all I was thinking was ‘man, I’m trying hard as hell to put these words together and I can’t,’ and the people telling me I can’t do it aren’t helping me do it. And that’s frustrating. That’s very frustrating.”

Johnstone referred to the work of Hanford, who wrote that “according to a study of the Texas prison population, nearly half of all inmates have dyslexia.”

“You look in our communities with the violence. You look in our jail systems. Those guys are crying out that they need help. It’s not saying that [they] need help with reading, but when you look at the correlation of the reading scores and the prison population, the unemployment rate, and every other negative statistic, and you see reading right there. We all know what needs to happen for all of our children to be equipped and to have an equal playing field in life. […] That’s why teachers need to understand how to teach children how to read. It’s so important,” said Johnstone.

Hite agreed about that importance and recounted how city 3rd graders are making progress. Over the last two years, 3rd-grade reading scores on the state tests were up 6 percentage points, he said, and the number of students scoring at the lowest reading level decreased by 8 percentage points.

But there is still a long way to go. Many teachers heading into their first years in the classroom have not been given training accredited by the IDA, and districts are hesitant to fund retraining programs.

Washington, of the District’s Special Education Office, said, “[Retraining] is expensive. It’s time-consuming. Because when colleges of education send students out of college without this knowledge, the first thing someone in my position has to confront is your mindset around this knowledge. They already don’t believe in it because they’ve been trained a different type of way. My first encounter with you is to convince you that this is the way to go.”

Washington is “wholly committed” to getting the Knowledge and Practice Standards into all of the higher education institutions in the Philadelphia area, and he supports Read by 4th’s initiatives to make sure all future students will get the reading learning experience that the IDA recommends.

These standards are for general educators as well as special educators, according to the IDA, and Washington emphasized that a big step of this process is going to be convincing general educators that special educators know what they are talking about when it comes to the science of reading.

Each speaker at the symposium spoke about getting this education for every student, regardless of socioeconomic or cultural background.

“We meet students where they are, because no matter what they are facing, one thing that I truly believe is that every single child that we come in contact with has the potential to learn,” Hite said.

Reading Captains lead the way to early literacy

2019-03-11T20:31:34+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Jasmond “Jazz the Barber” Schoolfield has been around too long and seen too much to have illusions about the challenges life poses in the North Philadelphia neighborhood where he earns his living cutting hair.

“We’re witness to a lot of stuff – drugs, crime,” said Schoolfield, 42.

But there is an alternative universe, one where an alligator worries about turning pink after swallowing a watermelon seed and where green eggs go best with ham, no matter what Sam thinks.

It’s that world that youngsters visit when they stop by Schoolfield’s shop, Creative Image Unisex Hair Salon on the corner of 28th Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. In North Philadelphia, Jazz is a “Reading Captain,” one of many programs partnered with Read by 4th, a nationally acclaimed citywide campaign to attack poverty by boosting early childhood literacy.

At Jazz’s place, the children and their grownups can pluck kids’ books like the “Watermelon Seed” and “Green Eggs and Ham,” from well-stocked book nooks to read there or take home.

“Statistically speaking, scientists and psychologists study this, so they know, if you don’t have an education, you can’t get a job, and you are going to have to resort to doing things on the corner like selling drugs or other things that are inappropriate,” Jazz said during one afternoon at his shop. “You could wind up in jail. So reading is important.”

That’s it in a nutshell, or maybe, in a watermelon seed.

The idea behind Read by 4th is simple, which is why it has been so widely embraced in Philadelphia. The city is considered a leader in the grade level movement, which has programs in 360 U.S. communities.

Read by 4th is based on the theory that children learn to read in kindergarten through third grade. After that, from fourth grade to Ph.D., they read to learn in all subjects, from science to social studies. Research shows, educators say, that a child who cannot read on grade level by the end of third grade is at increased risk of falling behind in school and dropping out. The consequences spiral down from there–poorer job prospects and economic struggles, sometimes for generations.

“We’ve got to take on generational poverty,” said Ralph Smith, a former University of Pennsylvania law professor who, as managing director of Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, is considered the founder of the national movement. “That’s the moral imperative of our time.”

Reading on grade level, he said, is a pivot point.

Smith served in Philadelphia School District leadership under Superintendent Constance Clayton from 1983 to 1990 and under Superintendent David Hornbeck from 1994 to 1996.

Reading Hero Jasmond “Jazz the Barber” Schoolfield reads to his 5-year-old granddaughter, Harmonee Schoolfield. Photo by Jane M. Von Bergen.

Read by 4th’s annual Mayoral Summit for its partners, on March 5, honors particularly its “Reading Captains” like Schoolfield who distribute books and promote early literacy resources in neighborhoods.

Its Reading Captains are part of what makes the Philadelphia campaign nationally known, said Michael English, executive director of Turn the Page, a similar program in Kansas City, Mo. The Philadelphia campaign, he said, “has a great reputation for a very well-thought out strategic campaign, but also as an innovator. At the same time, they have, more so than any other community, really pressed the academic community” to make sure new teachers are learning the best reading science.

Read by 4th has pushed hard to involve St. Joseph’s, Temple and Drexel universities in promoting “Knowledge and Practice Standards of Teaching Reading” as an integral part of teacher education.

Judging by test scores, Read by 4th’s efforts are beginning to pay off. The campaign launched in July 2015. Initial test results from the spring 2016 PSSA tests showed that 70 percent of the city’s third-graders were reading below grade-level with 30 percent reading at or above grade level.

By the spring of 2018, PSSA scores improved–third-graders reading at or above grade level improved to 35 percent and those below grade level fell from 70 percent to 65 percent.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” said Diane Castelbuono, the District’s deputy chief for early literacy. “We didn’t get into this problem overnight. But we have steady progress that is sustainable. We’re building capacity in our schools, in our communities and our neighborhoods.”

In Philadelphia, the Read by 4th campaign was spearheaded by Donna Cooper, the executive director for the advocacy organization Public Citizens for Children and Youth, and Sharmain Matlock-Turner, president and chief executive of the Urban Affairs Coalition.

Together, funded by an innovation grant from the Barra Foundation, they assembled 110 partners–the School District, nonprofits, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the city, advocates, the District Attorney’s office, the probation department and the health department. Now there are more than 130 partners who deal with all facets – some are involved with tutoring, some provide books, some design programs for parents, some sponsor workshops.

Cooper said that she and Matlock-Turner decided from the start that the partners weren’t going to sit around and commiserate. “We can’t walk out of here without a strategic plan and who is going to do what,” Cooper said. They insisted on signed contracts, and committing dollars and manpower.

Then, “we needed someone to run it,” Cooper said. The Free Library of Philadelphia was the best choice, she said, because the Library’s mission was clearly aligned and lacked the political baggage attached to the city or School District.

Jenny Bogoni, a no-nonsense nonprofit veteran, was hired to be the executive director. “I honestly, in my core, feel we have the right ingredients to crack this problem,” she said.

The ingredients are:
• Improving and expanding quality pre-K, now underway.
• Improving attendance with a marketing campaign and attendance ambassadors in schools.
• Reading Captains and Reading Heroes to bring more books to the community.
• Building home libraries. Nearly 1.1 million books have been distributed and 785 book installations have been created.
• Training for parents at 590 workshops so they can learn techniques for reading to their children and for building reading into everyday experiences such as food shopping. An app with tips now has more than 1,500 subscribers.
• Training for teachers. In the first three summers, 2,000 teachers were trained in the latest science for teaching reading. Schools have reading coaches to help teachers put into practice what they’ve learned. Funding for the $7.5 million effort came from the William Penn and Lenfest foundations and others.

The School District, Castelbuono said, didn’t experience the resentment that sometimes ensues when outsiders parachute in with their ideas, however well-intentioned. From the start, she said, the Read by 4th partners focused on helping each other, without blaming each other.

“It was a large-scale movement where everyone started to see their piece of the puzzle,” said Castelbuono. “It wasn’t like this is just a school problem, or just a parent problem, or just a community problem. We’re all in this together and we all have a role to play.”

Making a chore educational: Grocery store experiment aims to inspire learning

2018-09-10T13:31:03+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

If you’re grocery shopping in Philadelphia over the next year, you might run into a cherubic cartoon character named A.J.

Though his wide smile and trendy haircut impart a sense of whimsy, A.J. has a serious purpose: transforming an everyday supermarket trip into a learning laboratory.

A.J. is the face of “Talk It Up,” a pilot project aimed at inspiring interaction among parents and kids. At strategically placed sites across 10 Philadelphia grocery stores, A.J. appears on small, laminated signs and prompts shoppers to play a quick game.

One example: In the produce section of a Southwest Philadelphia ShopRite, A.J. asks kids to pick a nearby product, guess its weight, and then use the scale below the sign to check the accuracy of their estimate.

The task involves numbers and mathematical concepts such as estimation. And the sign itself is carefully constructed to include so-called sight words, the kind that kids often have to memorize as they grope through the early stages of reading.

Above all, the prompts are supposed to inspire conversation. The hope is that parents will see household tasks as opportunities for learning instead of chores to endure.

Based on research that suggests parent-child interactions boost early learning, Talk It Up hopes to inspire a paradigm shift in how adults think about educating their young ones.

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

The bells have rung, and schools are open

2018-08-27T19:57:06+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

On the first day of school, Mayor Kenney stood outside Muñoz-Marin Elementary School to raise and ring his school bell amid a crowd of merry bell-shakers. He drew laughs as he recalled his own childhood experience of lining up for school under the gaze of Sister Mary Amadeus, who rang a giant bell to start the day at the now-closed Lady of Mount Carmel School in South Philadelphia.

Kenney was joined by Superintendent William Hite and several members of the new Board of Education, all smiles and excitement as they celebrated the start of a new school year. The mayor was especially happy to start the first school year under a locally controlled school board after the dissolution of the School Reform Commission (SRC).

“Now that the schools are under local control, the city and School District can work more closely to strategically align services and resources that support students and their families,” Kenney said. “Together, we will ensure that there are quality schools in every neighborhood.”

Coordinating city services with schools is part of the mayor’s community schools initiative, and Board President Joyce Wilkerson, who attended the ceremony, has said she shares this goal for the new school board.

“This is the most important economic investment we can make in our city,” Kenney said. “It’s not Amazon, it’s not retaining businesses, it’s training our young people to take the jobs of the next 10, 20 or 30 years. If we don’t do it, we’re going to be mired in poverty forever. And if we do it, we’ll keep families from moving out of our city.”

Wilkerson was enthusiastic about the school board’s upcoming work.

“After 16 years under state control, we’re finally back to local control,” said Wilkerson, who also served as chair of the SRC. “The citizens of Philadelphia are taking responsibility for educating the kids of Philadelphia. This Board of Education had made a commitment to involving all of you. We’re going to operate with new formats, have board meetings all over the city, with committees that engage the public.”

Board of Education President Joyce Wilkerson speaks outside Muñoz-Marin Elementary School in Kensington to celebrate the start of a new school year.

The event was held at Muñoz-Marin to highlight the school’s progress in recent years — both academically and in upgrading the 21-year-old building and making it safe.

“The progress here at Muñoz-Marin is extremely exciting,” Hite said. “Over the last year, this school has jumped an impressive 63 percentage points on its [District] report in academic progress.”

He shared other good news as well. “More students are reading on grade level, our graduation rate is the highest it’s been in a decade, and we’re finally back to local control,” Hite said. “These accomplishments are the result of a lot of hard work from our teachers, support staff, and administrators.”

But Muñoz-Marin’s selection was also significant because it was the site of a widespread mold outbreak last summer. The problem was caused by a malfunctioning air conditioning system, which was replaced this summer, along with the ventilation system, as part of the District’s latest project to repair areas of school buildings with the highest need.

“We know and we accept that there is still work to be done,” Hite said. “There has been a lot of talk lately about the condition of our facilities and the challenges we face when our average school building in the District is 70 years old.”

Hite reported that so far, the project has repaired over 22,000 square feet of damaged paint and plaster across 168 classrooms and completed asbestos abatement at seven schools. At the same time, the District “modernized” 163 kindergarten through 3rd grade classrooms across 11 schools “to help boost our early literacy numbers.”

Principal Ariel Lajara is starting his third year at Muñoz-Marin.

Muñoz-Marin principal Ariel Lajara shows off the school’s newly renovated library.

“By the time kids came back to school last year, the building was ready for them. However, there was still a lot of work that needed to be done,” Lajara said. “So I’m beyond grateful that we received a new HVAC unit to avoid the problem happening again.”

The HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) project was part of a $5.6 million upgrade to those systems in both Muñoz-Marin and J.B. Kelly Elementary, which also saw a mold outbreak last summer. Across the two schools, the District also replaced 123 vents and 18 air handling units.

Hite also used the ceremony to congratulate 7th-grade honor roll student Keili Hernandez-Rogel and her parents. She was named one of the District’s Attendance Heroes for her “impressive” attendance record.

Keili Hernandez-Rogel, a 7th-grade honor roll student at Muñoz-Marin who was named an Attendance Hero, gives an interview to 6ABC News.

This was the first time in recent memory that students started school before Labor Day. The goal was to increase the number of full weeks of school and to maximize instructional time before assessments. The school year also will end earlier than usual, on June 4. It is the first year that kindergarten students began school on the same day as students in all other grades.

City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, head of the education committee, also attended the ceremony.

“We are just overjoyed to have this new school board. We fought for this,” Blackwell said. “It makes a big difference when we’re together, when we are unified, in trying to do what we need to do. So young people, we want to say good luck. We know you can be successful.”

Muñoz-Marin students in a dual-language program that uses one of the District’s newly renovated classrooms.

Jerry Jordan, president of the teachers’ union, also celebrated the start of school and the work being done around the District to improve the conditions of school buildings.

“As a classroom teacher, the start of a new school year always filled me with a fresh sense of optimism and anticipation,” Jordan said in a statement. “Our members have worked hard and fought for the best possible teaching and learning conditions in our schools. This year, we’re seeing the results of our efforts to promote PFT’s top priorities.”

“From the modernization of classrooms, to the expansion of the Community Schools model, to the process of lead removal and other building improvements, we are finally on the way to giving our children the schools they deserve.”

City Councilwoman Helen Gym started the day with the children of an undocumented woman who has taken sanctuary in the North Philadelphia Church of the Advocate after fleeing violence from drug cartels in Mexico.

“Today began with a moving reminder that our schools serve everyone,” Gym said in a statement. “This morning I accompanied the four brave children of Carmela Hernandez as they left behind their mother and headed to their respective schools to get the education they are entitled to.

City Councilwoman Helen Gym chats with Carmela Hernandez in the background as the Hernandez children play in the foreground.

“A year ago, there were plenty of worries, but today, there were only smiles as the children said goodbye and headed off for the first day back,” Gym said. “It was so nice to see the staff greet the children with warmth and recognition, and even a high five from one of their principals. I’m proud to know, love, and support these courageous children and their mother, Carmela.”

Gym went on to W.D. Kelley Elementary, where she toured the newly painted cafeteria and later visited Bryant Elementary with Blackwell.

“I’m so grateful to meet the school nurses, support staff, school police officers, crossing guards, and teachers who made the first day of school so welcoming to students and families,” Gym said. “I’ve worked hard with my fellow City Council members to make this year the best one yet. We’re celebrating new school staff, instrumental music programs in every elementary school, and renewed attention to the essential supports all our young people need and deserve.”

Campaign for Grade-Level Reading conference comes to Philadelphia

2018-07-25T18:44:55+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Rachel Honore is a foot soldier in Philadelphia’s campaign to get all children to read on grade level by the time they reach 4^th grade.

She is a “family navigator” for Action for Early Learning, an initiative led by Drexel University that brings together social service agencies, schools, and community members in the 19104 zip code, which includes parts of West Philadelphia. It is one of the partners in Philadelphia’s Read by 4th campaign, a three-year-old effort to promote early literacy.

As a navigator, Honore, mother of a 6-year-old, mobilizes her neighbors to advocate for more governmental and private resources in literacy and to model reading for their children and keep books in their homes.

“We want a reading captain on every block,” she said.

Honore was a featured panelist at a national convening of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, where more than 700 educators, funders, and policymakers gathered at the Logan Hotel in Center City to reiterate the importance of early literacy and share strategies.

“The goal is to mobilize educators, public agencies, leaders of government, parents, funders, partners, and everyone to really focus on moving the literacy needle,” said Rhonda Lauer, the president and CEO of Foundations Inc., a New Jersey-based nonprofit that partners with organizations and school districts to enhance educational experiences. Foundations Inc. is one of the main organizers of the conference.

“The conversation and the discussions are: We know how to teach kids to read, we know what to do. The big question is, how do you do this at scale for all kids? No large urban area has been able to come up with that answer,” said Lauer, a former Philadelphia principal and administrator.

Philadelphia is aiming to be the first to find an answer through the Read by 4th campaign, which has 120 partners, said Janet Haas, board chair of the William Penn Foundation, a major campaign funder. Read by 4th is organized through the Free Library, which Haas said is the “backbone” of the initiative, with programs and outreach at its 54 locations.

In Philadelphia, 42 percent of 3rd graders read at grade level (District, charter and Catholic schools are included in that figure). In District schools alone, it is 35 percent, which is up 5 percent from the year before.

That is an improvement over the last several years, but still far from enough, said Jenny Bogoni, who is directing Read by 4th for the Free Library.

Bogoni reminded the group that Philadelphia is the poorest big city in America – 25.7 percent of the population is living below the federal poverty line, including 37 percent of the children.

In addition, she said, 40 percent of the adult population is considered “low literacy,” meaning that they “struggle to fill out a job application and read a prescription.”

That’s a major reason why a multi-generational, comprehensive approach is needed, she said, one that seeks to update a fragmented city bureaucracy while also employing people like Honore to literally knock on neighbors’ doors.

On the first full day of the conference, which runs through Friday, Philadelphia showcased its campaign. It mobilizes everyone from merchants to barbers to clergy members and, through its partners, it stresses the importance of school readiness, daily attendance, quality instruction, and out-of-school learning experiences.

The goal is nothing less than to overhaul systems and change behavior, Bogoni said, a point reiterated by other speakers, including Mayor Kenney.

“Everyone owns this,” said Sharmain Matlock-Turner, president of the Urban Affairs Coalition, in a film dramatizing the effort that was shown at the conference. Matlock-Turner and Donna Cooper of Public Citizens for Children & Youth were the driving forces behind the launch of the Philadelphia campaign.

Superintendent William Hite has made reaching 100 percent literacy by grade 4 one of his “anchor goals” for improving achievement in the District. With foundation support, the District has revamped curriculum and instruction in kindergarten through grade 3 to support this objective. Over three summers, several thousand teachers were trained in best practices, and each classroom received “leveled libraries,” in which children could easily access color-coded books that matched their reading level.

Colleen Bowen, principal of Clara Barton Elementary School in Feltonville, said that the percentage of students reading at grade level in 4th grade is “completely unacceptable,” adding that the District’s early literacy push is aimed at creating “real and lasting cultural change.” Principals have been re-trained along with the teachers, she noted.

But changes in the School District are not enough. City Managing Director Michael DiBerardinis said the movers and shakers behind Read by 4th “kicked my butt to get me around this whole idea,” and now the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the Departments of Human Services and Parks & Recreation, and others are focusing on the issue through collaboration, sustained funding, and deeper community attachments to focus holistically on the needs of families.

The conference will include panels and seminars on trauma-informed practices, because many children enter school suffering from trauma, a frequent side-effect of growing up in poverty.

The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is the brainchild of Ralph Smith, who started the work while he was executive vice president at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Smith has also worked as Philadelphia School District chief of staff and as a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The campaign now encompasses more than 380 communities in 44 states, with 23 new sites joining just this week.

Speaker after speaker, including Gov. Wolf and Kenney, stressed that commitment is the key. Focusing on early literacy makes both “moral and practical” sense, said Kenney, who has made expanding high-quality preschool a hallmark of his administration.

Children who get a good education have a better chance of avoiding incarceration, getting a good job, and paying taxes, he said. Plus, improving the education system will keep young millennial families in the city when their children reach school age instead of having them leave and then return as empty-nesters “to buy tax-abated condos.”

“We are bringing literacy to life in laundromats, grocery stores, barbershops, homeless shelters, and other places in our community,” Kenney said. “…We are moving full speed ahead to give our students opportunity in life they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Honore, whose son Jonathan is thriving at Locke Elementary School, came to the work simply. Several years ago, as the parent of a toddler, she said, “I was trying to navigate organizations and programs that would assist my child’s literacy growth and development. I realized that within my area, they were far and few between.”

A graduate of Bodine High School with a business degree from Peirce College, she hooked up with Action for Early Learning, part of the federal Mantua Promise Neighborhood initiative and one of the partners in Read by 4th. There, she speaks with other parents “so they may make informed decisions about their child’s education and [be reminded] how important it is to be consistent.” For parents to know they have a voice “is huge,” she said.

“We want a child going to Grandma’s house to pick up a book like they pick up a cell phone,” she said. “We want the culture and the family dynamic changed.”

This story has been updated to reflect that the percentage of children reading on grade level in District schools is 35 percent.

Enjoy a ‘Summer of Wonder’ at the Free Library

2018-06-07T19:08:35+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The Free Library of Philadelphia kicked off its summer reading program, called “Summer of Wonder,” on Thursday, June 7, at its Parkway Central branch.

Third graders from Mead and Bache-Martin Elementary Schools attended the event, which included book readings by Mayor Kenney and Wells Fargo sponsor Joseph Kirk, art projects sponsored by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a tour of the library, and a surprise dance party with the Philly Phanatic.

Summer of Wonder is a series of free programs held at all Free Library branches throughout the summer meant to encourage reading for pleasure.

Valerie Samuels, the assistant chief of youth services and programs at the library, said that giving students opportunities to learn in a fun setting over the summer can help prevent the loss of education that they gained during the school year.

“Studies show that reading six books over the summer can prevent reading loss and maintain students reading levels when they return to school in the fall,” Samuels wrote in an email. “Summer of Wonder embraces a summer learning model which retains the important element of reading, but includes activities and technology that support the different learning styles of youth.”

Kenney spoke at the start of the event and explained to students that the library is more than a place to check out books.

“There are thousands of books at the library to read,” Kenney said. “But it’s also a wonderful opportunity to discover, create and play.”

Summer of Wonder also aims to promote a safe learning environment in the libraries that is accessible to all students.

“Libraries during the summer provide the opportunity for youth to be a part of a community where they can gather, converse about any topic, and make new friends,” Samuels wrote. “Library staff are committed to encouraging the growth and success of youth, taking an interest in what youth are interested in and creating a space where interests can be explored and opening the door to new experiences.”

Tanisha Davis, a member of Mead Elementary’s therapeutic support staff, attended and said that events like these are important for all Philadelphia children.

“I think this is a great resource for children to stay mentally active,” Davis said. “The events are free, which is great for families with low socio-economic status. This helps keep all kids educated and definitely helps with their literacy.”

Philadelphia has the highest adult illiteracy rate in Pennsylvania, with 22 percent of adults lacking basic literacy skills. Less than 40 percent of kids in 3rd grade can read at grade level. Summer of Wonder is part of the Read by 4th campaign, which is working to have 97 percent of Philadelphia 4th graders reading at grade level by 2020.

Skye Davis, a 3rd grader at Mead Elementary, said that she doesn’t really like to read, but that she does like the book Descendants, based on the Disney Channel movie.

“I like doing the crafts,” she said. “This is fun. I might want to read more if I get to go to more stuff like this.”

The mayor told the students that they should look for books that appeal to their individual interests, as Skye did with Descendants.

“You can develop a love for reading by choosing the books that are most exciting to you,” Kenney said. “I just finished a book called Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and it was very interesting. I would recommend taking a look.”

Summer of Wonder runs from now until Aug. 31 at all Free Library of Philadelphia branches.

Watch the Phanatic hold a dance party at the library summer reading kickoff

As Philly kids learn to read, ‘coaches’ help them along

2018-02-22T12:57:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Shalia Alejandro moved to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico when she was 6, just about the age that kids are starting to read.

Unlike her peers, though, she was also trying to learn a new language and new customs. The swirl of unfamiliar things left her confused and lacking confidence.

“A lot of times, it was really discouraging seeing everyone speak English and you’re just off in the corner like, ‘OK, I need to find a way to be able to relate to them,’ ” she said.

She broke through in 2nd grade, under the tutelage of a teacher who would give students an hour or more simply to read and grow more comfortable with books.

Today, Alejandro is a confident high school senior at Mariana Bracetti Academy Charter School who plans to work in early childhood education some day. After school, she goes back to her alma mater, William Cramp Elementary in North Philadelphia, and employs the same strategy that her 2nd-grade teacher used.

Read the rest of this story at WHYY News

Eight schools get upgrades to early childhood classrooms

2017-08-25T07:22:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Superintendent William Hite visited Allen M. Stearne Elementary School in Frankford to tour the newly renovated pre-kindergarten to 2nd-grade classrooms. New lighting was installed in each room and the walls were painted with vivid colors to create an environment conducive to learning.

The renovations are a part of the District’s $1.1 billion capital program, designed to bring needed improvements to its huge infrastructure.

District officials focused on capital and environmental improvements, Hite said.

“And not just thinking about environments in terms of HVACs and roofs, but also the appearance of classrooms and the learning environments of classrooms,” he said.

Stearne, built in 1966, is one of eight schools to receive these improvements. The others are Pennell, Locke, Lea, Duckrey, Gideon and Meade Elementary Schools, and Haverford Learning Center, part of the District’s Bright Futures early childhood programming. The schools’ selection was based on their low literacy scores.

“It’s really important that our young people, our staff members, and quite frankly, our families experience something very different than the old, dark buildings that we traditionally have,” Hite said.

“What we want to do is brighten these up. We wanted to begin thinking about the environment in terms of feel and look and making sure that educationally, they’re conducive to engaging young people in the things we need to engage them in.”

In addition to paint and lighting, the rooms received an upgrade in furniture and learning tools. New desks, chairs, cabinets, closets, area rugs, and more were selected and designed to promote a classroom environment in which small groups of students can learn in different designated areas of the classroom.

Teachers will receive professional development training and assistance throughout the year so they can make the most out of their new classroom model. Also, a survey will be distributed to the schools to see what is or isn’t helpful to the teachers.

Stearne is expecting 560 students for the 2017-18 school year, and there is excitement among the faculty and staff about the improvements.

“We’re just very appreciative that Stearne was selected to even take part in this modernization,” said principal Mecca Jackson. “And our staff is ready to tackle this challenge this year when we implement, with fidelity, everything they’ve brought to us.”

The upgrades cost more than $5 million, with $700,000 coming from the William Penn Foundation.

But in a cash-strapped District, where schools are in need of serious repairs ranging from leaky roofs to electrical systems to new construction, why focus on these classroom upgrades? For instance, the malfunction in Munoz-Marin Elementary School’s air-conditioning system caused mold all over the school that could delay its opening.

“We still have the leaky roofs. We still have to fix that,” Hite said. “But we also have to give some attention to the environments where our young people are learning and where educators are teaching.”

He added, “This is not just about buying new furniture, but about buying the things that will be conducive to the literacy that we know, based from the evidence, are effective.”

The ultimate goal is to make these upgrades in classrooms throughout the District, but for now, some schools will receive some improvements.

“While we’re starting with these eight,” Hite said, “this is a project we want to take throughout the School District of Philadelphia so that the children are actually experiencing something very different.”

More than 800 teachers take part in third annual summer literacy institute

2017-06-29T08:00:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

For about an hour Wednesday morning, Ricki Straff and about 20 of her fellow teachers went to Hawaii.

Well, not exactly. They were in Classroom A125 at Fels High School in the Northeast, attending the District’s third annual Early Literacy Summer Institute. And the leaders of a session on “Writing Objectives and Lesson Planning Using the Curriculum Engine” thought it needed something to spruce up what sounded like a dry and technical exercise.

So there were beach balls and paper leis, bells and recorded hula music.

“Well, it’s summer, and we’re in a vacation mindset,” explained Brenee’ Waters, who led the session with Ginger Smith. “And we wanted people to be more receptive to what we’re telling them.”

That’s because the mission of the summer institute is serious – teaching young children to read fluently by the end of 3rd grade, a benchmark that predicts with sobering accuracy a child’s future life chances. For instance, students who miss that milestone are four times more likely to drop out of high school, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Waters and Smith are school-based literacy coaches, and the “students” were all kindergarten through 3rd-grade teachers.

For Straff, a 28-year District veteran who has seen everything, the professional development offered by the Institute “is one of the most informational offered to teachers. It really breaks down the whole literacy framework.”

Teaching young children to read is difficult, requiring broad skills, knowledge of many strategies, and the ability to diagnose a child’s learning style and reading impediments and to adjust instruction on the fly.

“Many people underestimate how complicated it is,” said Diane Castelbuono, the District’s deputy chief for early childhood education. Especially in a city like Philadelphia, “where you have a classroom of 30 kids, some learning-disabled, some English language learners, some who just struggle with the basic foundations. Teaching in that environment is not easy, and we are hoping to provide our teachers with evidence-based tools that can help them.”

The week-long institute is run by the District’s Office of Early Childhood Education and the Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, with money contributed by the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia and the Lenfest and William Penn Foundations. For the third consecutive year, it was held during the week after school closed for the summer. Partners include the Children’s Literacy Initiative, which pioneered many of these techniques and has been working in Philadelphia for more than two decades to help teachers fill their classrooms with words, books, and writing. CLI has received major grants from the U.S. Department of Education to scale up its work.

In 2015, teachers from 40 schools were trained. Last year, they came from 53 schools, and this year, more than 850 teachers from 57 schools signed up. All the District’s schools with early grades are now covered.

The teachers are paid for their time, but the institute is voluntary. Eighty-five percent of the eligible teachers signed up, Castelbuono said. Once each school’s teachers participate, the school gets “leveled libraries” for K-3 classrooms to use in instruction. Books are coded based on difficulty, and students know what level they are on and can pick appropriate books, which motivates them to read and to improve.

Session topics included creating a literacy-rich environment, early literacy for students with disabilities, developing writers, using data to inform instruction, and working with English learners.

“Teaching reading is a very individualized process. Each child learns at a different speed and progresses at a different pace,” said Castelbuono.

Straff, who most recently taught 2nd grade and has spent 25 years at Andrew Hamilton Elementary in West Philadelphia, is about to transition to being a literacy coach herself.

“This is giving me information I can take back to my teachers,” she said. Her main takeaway: The training “will make you a better teacher, but you have to pick and choose what will work for you and your students.”

That is the daunting task facing Elizabeth Picarella, a newly minted graduate of Temple University with a degree in early childhood and in special education who is about to embark on her first job at one of the District’s most impoverished schools, Meade Elementary in North Philadelphia.

“So far, as a new teacher, this has been phenomenal,” she said of the institute. “It’s great to talk to veteran teachers, to hear from experts, to see what really works and learn the research behind it, and be shown examples of how you can implement the best strategies.”

Especially helpful to her? A practical session on how to keep other students productively occupied when a teacher is running “guided reading” for a group that needs extra help. “In order to get the most out of that time, you need other students to be working on things that are beneficial to them,” she said.

The other session that stood out for her was a session on developing writers. The instructor, she said, was “so enthusiastic about writing. She’s in love with her students and the work that she does. She had handouts, examples of student work, things I can use in the classroom. As a new teacher, it’s great to get anything.”

Another relatively new teacher, Anna Phelan, said that she found the sessions invaluable, also stressing their practicality. Phelan did her undergraduate work at the University of Scranton and got a master’s degree as a reading specialist from St. Joseph’s University. She taught two years at a Catholic school in Olney and will start teaching kindergarten at Overbrook Educational Center in September.

“One thing that sets this institute apart – it’s not only theory, but also practical implementation and what exactly you can do to improve literacy in the classroom,” she said. “As important as theory is, like learning why students should read independently, as a teacher, you are looking for real solid practical ways to take that theory and put it into practice. What has been so incredible about the last three days is how much practical advice we are getting about what we can do.”

In a session on developing writers, she asked about how to know when students were ready to revise their work or were still in the drafting stage. “Multiple teachers said, this is what I do, one shared her rubric with me. There’s a real culture of sharing ideas and brainstorming, and it’s so incredibly helpful.”

The session run by Waters and Smith was not so much about modeling particular classroom strategies as it was to help teachers understand how to use the “curriculum engine” on SchoolNet, the District’s online platform. The District uses several different reading series, and this tool helps teachers match the books and the lessons with specific state standards and learning goals.

“It’s not online lesson plans; it’s more like resources so you can make your lesson plans,” said Waters. “It’s how to access resources for literacy in your particular grade.”

Learning how to use it effectively can save teachers time and give them different ideas for approaching instruction so the two-hour literacy blocks don’t become repetitive and boring. It also helps teachers integrate literacy-building exercises and strategies into social studies, science, and math lessons.

The institute attendees start each day hearing a keynote speech from a nationally-known speaker on literacy topics, including Pedro Noguera, who specializes in how schools are influenced by social and economic conditions. Karen Mapp, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, will speak Friday on family engagement.

Superintendent William Hite stopped by the institute on Wednesday morning to visit sessions and talk with teachers.

“This is important work for us, our signature initiative,” Hite said. “If we get children reading on grade level by 3rd grade, we solve a lot of other problems.”

Read by 4th campaign reports on its progress

2017-04-11T10:06:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s literacy initiative Read by 4th is building momentum in its mission to have students reading at grade level by 4th grade.

A mayoral roundtable was held in February to provide an update on the campaign’s progress and to discuss future goals for improving early childhood literacy in the city.

Nearly 20 speakers attended, including Mayor Kenney, Superintendent William Hite, and Read by 4th executive director Jenny Bogoni. Otis Hackney, Philadelphia’s chief education officer, and Loraine Ballard Morrill, community affairs director for iHeartMedia, were the emcees.

Kenney said, “There’s no doubt that everyone in this room shares a commitment to Read by 4th’s mission.”

Read by 4th has partnered with many organizations in the city to bring literacy aid to local communities, including Philadelphia Youth Network, Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and the United Way of Greater Philadelphia & Southern New Jersey.

Research indicates that students who are unable to read at grade level by 4th grade are more vulnerable to having difficulty in learning, which leads to a higher risk of dropping out of school. It has been reported that only 33 percent of Philadelphia’s students are reading proficiently by 4th grade. Read by 4th has presented a multi-faceted plan to increase that number to 100 percent by 2020.

The campaign aims to use mobile apps and text alerts to help parents teaching their children at home; improve literacy instruction in schools; work to increase attendance throughout the District; use leveled libraries in classrooms and at home to meet students at their reading level; provide every child with free access to a tutor in their neighborhood library; and designate a “reading hero” on every block to read to local children.

“I am feeling super excited about it,” Bogoni said. “I think there were incredible ideas put forward. It was so heartwarming to see the number of civic leaders and community leaders who are committed to helping us turn those ideas to action.”

Read by 4th website has new tools for parents

2017-04-05T16:36:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s childhood literacy initiative Read By 4th’s website has new tools for parents and others to help young readers.

The site now includes specific tips and resources for helping children from infancy to age nine. The resources are broken out by three age groups, 0-2, 3-4, and 5-9.

Also, parents and community members can follow the progress of Read By 4th’s six-part plan to make sure all students read proficiently by the time they enter 4th grade. Currently, a third of students reach that level.

For instance, visitors to the site can find data of progress on such indicators as attendance rates, teacher training, after-school programming, and pre-K enrollment. One piece of data: the rate of kindergarten through third graders who attend school at least 95 percent of the time rose by more than three percent in 2015-16 school year.

It is too early to know the amount of traffic going to the site, said Jenny Bogoni, executive director of Read By 4th. However, as the initiative continues to expand its engagement with communities, she expects use of the site to increase.

"We know that to make the change we want to see in families’ lives and [children’s] reading levels, a website alone is not going to do that," she said. "A website isn’t even the primary tool for doing that. It is really a support mechanism for other activities that we’re doing."

Read by 4th aims to improve attendance with a new community ambassador program

2016-10-17T13:59:00+00:00

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is one of five cities where more than a third of its students are reported as being chronically absent. Attendance Works, a school attendance advocacy group, recently revealed this startling statistic in a report that examined absenteeism in districts across the country, including those in Baltimore, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Detroit.

In these cities, chronic absenteeism — when students miss 10 percent or more of the school year — is often the result of systemic issues such as poverty, poor health care, and under-resourced schools. According to numerous reports, there is a direct connection between attendance and academic achievement.

As part of an effort to improve attendance, the District partnered with Read by 4th to put 10 community ambassadors in six North Philadelphia elementary schools to address chronic absenteeism and lateness among students.

Principals at Alexander McClure, Isaac Sheppard, William Cramp, Lewis Elkin, Cayuga, and Bayard Taylor selected at least one trusted community member each to act as a liaison between the school and the community. They gave preference to Spanish-speaking parents of students attending the schools.

The ambassadors are expected to greet and inform parents and families of the importance of attendance, and maintain communication as the year progresses. Parents and families of students with a history of chronic absence or those showing the patterns will receive focused attention to address the challenges preventing good attendance.

“I’m not here to judge you,” said Eva Sanchez, ambassador for Alexander McClure Elementary School in the Hunting Park section of Philadelphia. “I am not here to discipline you. I’m here just to figure out what’s going on so we can help each other fix it.”

Sanchez is a nine-year resident of Hunting Park and has two children – a teenager and a 2nd grader who attends McClure. She earned a reputation for watching out for other children in the community as if they were her own, she said.

“The parents just seem to trust me a little bit more because they see I have that aspect that I am going to protect children in front of me, or just look after them.”

This trust allows her to get close to parents who may be wary about sharing their struggles of getting their child to school with a traditional school employee. For example, Sanchez often reassures parents who can’t afford uniforms for their children that they will not be reprimanded or dismissed early for a dress-code violation.

“Because we are a low-income city, some parents just don’t have the money to buy the uniforms,” she said. “[So we tell the parents to] never fear us sending your child home for uniforms. Send them however you want, and if they have issues getting uniforms, we can work with you.”

Aside from deeper systemic problems, some parents are very casual when it comes to attendance, especially with young learners.

A 2013 study from the University of Chicago found that children of parents who knew the importance of attendance had an average absence of 7.5 percent, while students whose parents were less aware had an average of 13.5 percent, making them chronically absent.

The ambassadors program is a part of Read by 4th’s strategy to ensure that every child in Philadelphia is reading at grade level by 4th grade. According to researchers, if a student is not reading proficiently by that time, he or she is at risk of falling behind in academic progress. In fact, a student’s reading ability at 3rd grade is a strong indicator of whether they will graduate high school. Therefore, because most of the reading instruction takes place first thing in the morning, Read by 4th’s ambassador program places equal emphasis on lateness.

“Our overarching goals through Read by 4th’s work with attendance is to make sure that kids are present for the reading instruction that takes place,” said Abby Thaker, director of strategic partnerships for Read by 4th.

“And so from that point of view, we are pretty agnostic on whether that absence is an excused absence or unexcused absence because either way, a child is missing instruction,” she said.

Absences are an easy problem to identify, but lateness can go under the radar. Although the academic impact of absenteeism is limited to individual students, lateness causes a disruption to the entire class.

When a younger student is late, even by 10 minutes, said Sanchez, he or she must be signed in and walked to class, which is already in progress. Teachers must stop instruction of the class to accommodate the student. The problem is then exacerbated when multiple students are late.

“It’s a disruption that affects everyone,” Sanchez said.

Last year, McClure had an average daily attendance of 94 percent for the entire school, but 42 percent of the students showed up late more than 10 times throughout the year. Sanchez hopes to reduce these numbers by talking to parents to help them understand the importance of punctuality at school.

“[These are] things that can be rectified if you do a little bit of time management in the morning,” Sanchez said.

“If you need to go to that corner store, wake up five to 10 minutes earlier. Little simple things can make a big difference.”